A terrific two-hander that belongs at the National: RSC’s Kunene and the King reviewed

The Gift is three plays in one. It opens in a blindingly white Victorian parlour where a posh lady, Sarah, is teaching her clumsy maid to serve tea correctly. Both characters are black. Sarah’s prosperous husband, also black, arrives home and the scene continues as the gauche skivvy (Donna Berlin, brilliant) makes more and more hilarious blunders. What is this play? Perhaps a neglected Victorian comedy revived with colour-blind casting. In fact, the script is inspired by a historical character, Sarah Forbes Bonetta, a Yoruba princess born in Nigeria in the 19th century, who was adopted by Queen Victoria and raised as an English gentlewoman.

A drama about a solitary black female living in high Victorian society would be fascinating, but the writer, Janice Okoh, has thrown in two extra black characters, Sarah’s husband and the maid. These additions seem improbable but the play doesn’t give a hoot about distinctions of fact and fiction as long as it can make everyone laugh.