Representations of Olaudah Equiano in theatres and on screen are nothing new. The two hundredth anniversary of the end of Britain’s Atlantic slave trade in 2007 focused renewed attention on the leading black writer of the period. From Michael Apted’s Amazing Grace (2006), in which Senegalese singer Youssou N’Dour portrayed the only African character permitted dialogue, to the more balanced but poorly-executed BBC production The Extraordinary Equiano (2007), Equiano has been an important feature of contemporary discussions of the slave trade. It is entirely fair that this should be the case. The publication of The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano in 1789 made the outspoken opponent of slavery one of London’s leading abolitionists. As one of the earliest English books by an African writer, The Interesting Narrative became part of the National Curriculum in England and Wales in 2007. The opposition to former Secretary for Education Michael Gove’s plan to axe that curriculum – which included an open letter to The Times signed by the Rev. Jesse Jackson among others – suggests how important Equiano remains to our collective understanding of the slave trade.

Adam Tulloch’s emotional and heart-rending new play is both timely and offers us an entirely new perspective on the writer. Gustavus Vassa – the name he used throughout his adult life – was kidnapped aged eleven with his sister from the Igbo village of Essaka. The play begins with Vassa’s kidnapping and ends with his sale on the coast to a ship bound for the Americas. This early snapshot of Vassa’s much larger autobiography encompasses that part of the slave trade least understood by both the academic community and the wider public. The play follows Vassa as he struggles with his separation from his family and, in turn, his sister when they are split up soon after the kidnapping. In a production lasting only fifty minutes, the sense of displacement felt by Vassa is explored brilliantly as he is repeatedly exposed to mental and physical abuse until his sale to the Europeans, who rarely travelled more than a few miles from the coastal forts and bought their cargoes from indigenous traders from the interior.

The most extraordinary elements of the production are Tulloch’s understated but inspired direction and the phenomenal talent of his actors. No effort is made to contextualise Vassa’s experience and the simple backdrop of black curtain and the sparing use of props forces the audience to come face-to-face with the emotional impact of the slave trade. The result is an unsettling but intellectually and emotionally stimulating experience which marks The Enslaved African out as one of the best pieces of historical theatre I have seen in a number of years. In neglecting the aesthetic look of the play, Tulloch allows the actors to come to the fore and they do a truly brilliant job of articulating the horrors of the slave trade. Alessandro Babalola is particularly impressive as the troubled slave trader while Jonathan Luwagga and Marie-Helene Boyd both shine as the kidnapped children. The play’s heart is its absorbing rendering of the way in which slavery destroyed the bonds of family and community. Tulloch’s decision to bring the audience into the play by having them serve as proxies for the European traders on the coast is unsettling and fantastic in equal measure.

The significant weakness of the production, at least from the point of view of those interested in Vassa’s life, is the extremely loose relationship of the play to Vassa’s Interesting Narrative. Vassa’s experience – far from being conducted by a single captor as in the play – involved multiple kidnappers and a seven month journey to the coast during which time he passed through the hands of numerous owners. In the Narrative, Vassa described being in the company of owners who treated him well, including a goldsmith and a family in which he was not even treated as a slave. He even declared that ‘in honour of those sable destroyers of human rights [his captors] … I never met with any ill treatment, or saw any offered to their slaves, except tying them’.

This inconsistency between book and play would be of no consequence if it did not belie the telling centrality of cruelty to the intellectual drive of the play. In Tulloch’s production, the single captor represents the evils of the trade and is rarely restrained in his abuses. When the captor eventually shows some restraint, we discover that he too has knowledge and experience of enslavement, something which haunts him as much as it does Vassa and his sister. It is a surprisingly accurate interpretation of the way in which the Atlantic slave trade disrupted West African society and owes much to an interpretation advanced most compellingly by Guyana historian Walter Rodney in the 1970s. But it is not Vassa’s Interesting Narrative. Indeed, the play bears almost no resemblance to the Narrative and one is inclined to think that Equiano’s name serves less as an inspiration for the play than it serves as a vehicle for Tulloch’s storytelling.

One consequence of this is that the play does not engage – nor does it really need to engage – with the biggest controversy regarding Vassa to have emerged since the rediscovery of his Narrative in the 1960s: the place of his birth. Vincent Carretta’s biography, Equiano, the African: Biography of a Self-Made Man (2005), suggests that Vassa may have lied about his African origins in order to advance the abolition movement. Abolitionism had much to gain by publishing the writings of a figure with first-hand experience of the terror of the middle passage. Documentary evidence drawn from baptismal and naval muster records, however, suggests that Vassa may have been born in the Carolinas and had not, therefore, been kidnapped as a boy from Igboland. These findings, while revelatory, have been countered by a number of scholars who dispute the evidence and remain convinced that, while he may have got some of his facts wrong or embellished his account through discussions with enslaved Africans in London, Vassa was African by birth. Catherine Obianuju Acholonu’s 1989 study used anthropological evidence to test and endorse the veracity of Vassa’s description of Igbo culture, which included the first description of Igbo scarification to appear in the English language. More recently, Paul Lovejoy has published a compelling counter-argument to Carretta’s claim in Slavery & Abolition 27: 3 (2006), in which he outlines the extent of Vassa’s knowledge of, and identification with, the Bight of Biafra and notes that ‘the preponderant evidence confirms his African birth’. This is not idle historiographical disagreement. Vassa’s accounts of both Igbo culture and the middle passage have been central to studies of both and, as was recognized during Vassa’s lifetime, the authenticity of his story was a major part of its appeal and its influence upon the British public.

The director’s acceptance of Vassa’s African origins is, of course, the basis of the play and it would have made little sense to tell two origin stories. But in eschewing Vassa’s own account of his experiences, the play does something of a disservice to the Narrative. Those looking for an accurate interpretation of The Interesting Narrative will be disappointed by this production. But those who wish to engage with the experiences and consequences of the transatlantic slave trade will be confronted by an affecting and stimulating experience.

Olaudah Equiano: The Enslaved African ran from 1st to 16th August 2014 at The Space @ Jury’s Inn, Jeffrey Street, Edinburgh.