TO WRITE of a resounding victory in which a young enslaved black man wins his freedom from a white oppressor would be simple – and celebratory.

But that wasn’t playwright May Sumbwanyambe’s plan at all when he sat down to write his new work, Enough of Him.

Sumbwanyambe tells the story of Joseph Knight, an African man enslaved in Jamaica who was then brought to Scotland by plantation owner Sir John Wedderburn to work in his Perthshire mansion.

In 1778, however, Knight took his case for freedom to court in Perth and although initially unsuccessful, he won his appeal on the argument that although slavery was legal in Jamaica, that was not the case in Scotland.

But Glasgow-based May Sumbwanyambe didn’t see this story as a simple good-versus-evil tale whereby the victim wins in the end.

In featuring four of the inhabitants of the Wedderburn mansion, Knight and his wife Annie and Lord and Lady Wedderburn, the writer offers up not only a nuanced argument about moral values but an examination of the concept of slavery itself.

Was Annie, a local servant whom Knight fell in love with, any less enslaved than her husband? And what of Lady Wedderburn? Her anti-slavery stance was ignored.

The writer also examines the great debate going on within the head of Joseph Knight. John Wedderburn, we learn, paid for Knight’s wedding, the baptism of his child and for teaching him to read and write.

Yet, Joseph Knight simply knew he had to be free.

“I didn’t want to create any good guys that were too good or bad guys that were too bad,” says Sumbwanyambe “That’s a trope we’ve seen in all these slavery narratives.”

The writer wanted nuance, and enough conflict to offer up a dramatic narrative.

“Within this household, Joseph Knight is saying, ‘Enough of him, because if I can’t get free of this situation, I’m never going to be a father, earn a wage and live a full life.’ At the same time, Margaret Wedderburn is saying, ‘Enough of Joseph. Enough of slavery. Enough of this prejudice inside my house.’”

The writer also attempts to understand the thinking and logic of John Wedderburn, who spent some time in Jamaica.

This play, backed by the National Theatre of Scotland and Pitlochry Festival Theatre, doesn’t present the audience with a happy ending – despite Joseph Knight’s courtroom success.

“When you do that kind of ending, you are tiptoeing into propaganda,” he says.

“Yes, the judge has made this great decision, but it is reckless to say you can go through all that trauma, then a judge goes, ‘You’re the winner,’ and all of a sudden everything’s just good.”

Enough of Him, Pitlochry Festival Theatre, October 20-29 and touring until November 19

ONE afternoon in 1948, two women sat down to lunch in swanky Hollywood restaurant, Romanoffs, and the result saw patrons stand open-mouthed at the bar, waiting to see the results of this encounter. Now, it’s claimed the establishment’s customers “probably wouldn’t have blinked if Harry Truman himself had walked in on the elbow of Stalin”, but on seeing these two women together, the Romanoff regulars called every news agency imaginable.

Why? The lunching pair were Hedda Hopper and Louella Parsons, two of America’s most famous gossip columnists. How did they become so powerful? How could they control Hollywood to the extent they could determine a film’s casting and have a huge say in the creative process? Did the “Weird Sisters” really hate each other – or was this rivalry blown up by the misogynistic American media in a bid to boost circulation even higher?

This deadly duo are under the spotlight in a new play by Johnny McKnight. However, the top Scottish playwright, fresh from writing success in London’s West End with 101 Dalmatians, asks if these women – pitched as bitter rivals and condemned to the history books as morally bankrupt – were really holding all the cards. Were they puppets, manipulated by a corrupt media machine?

In their quest for column mentions, studio heads, publicists, and stars had long been playing the dangerous game of pitting one woman tooth and nail against the other. But did these these multi-million dollar-earning, right-wing. distorted fun-house-mirror doubles (one fat, the other thin) have more in common than they cared to acknowledge?

Louella Parsons once admitted; “So many people say we do not like one another. Who are we to argue against such an enthusiastic majority opinion?”

Dani Heron and Helen Logan star in The Golden Rage, Oran Mor, Glasgow, until Saturday