SOURCE: “Four Rum Jamaicans,” in Times Literary Supplement, April 19, 1991, p. 19.

In the following review of A Jamaican Airman Foresees His Death, Jaggi commends the play's powerful symbolism and humor, though finds shortcomings in its uneven pacing and underdeveloped contemporary parallels.

The title of Fred D'Aguiar's play sounds an echo of W. B. Yeats's poem “An Irish Airman Foresees His Death.” Through an episodic, exuberant juxtaposition of dialogue, verse and song, D'Aguiar transfers the poem's ambivalence about fighting another country's battles to the experience of a Jamaican airman in the Second World War.

Set initially in Jamaica in the 1940s, the play satirizes the cynical appeal made to the dominions, to fight for King and country. Kojo, an eccentric creole seer, parodies Churchill's broadcasts with scatological relish, while mocking the gullibility of the young, rum-soaked Jamaicans who enthusiastically queue to join up. D'Aguiar humorously reveals the mixed motives of...