No ordinary servant for an extraordinary master

The story of Dr Johnson's relationship with the child slave Frank Barber is to be told on stage

The young black man looks serenely, confidently, out of the formal portrait. He is handsome, with perhaps a hint of sadness in his eyes; otherwise there appears to be nothing particularly unusual about him. But the fact that he was painted at all is quite extraordinary, for the young man is probably Francis Barber, a servant in 18th-century London when Britain was heavily involved in the slave trade, and servants, black or white, would rarely be the subject of a portrait. But this was no ordinary servant and his master no ordinary master.

Francis, or Frank, Barber was "given" to Samuel Johnson - author of one of the earliest English dictionaries - by his great friend Richard Bathurst, a doctor, whose father owned plantations in Jamaica. When he died, Colonel Bathurst left the boy, who was then aged about seven, his freedom, and Richard suggested that Johnson, mourning the death of his beloved wife Tetty, should take him in as a servant. There are hints that Frank may have been Colonel Bathurst's natural son. In any event, the childless Johnson became devoted to Frank, sent him to school in Bishops Stortford and eventually made him his heir. He stipulated that, upon his death, Frank should take his family - his wife Betty and four children - to Lichfield, Johnson's birthplace, the city he had left years before, sharing a horse with the actor David Garrick, to find his fortune in London.

Lichfield is now honouring all three men. Its newly rebuilt theatre bears Garrick's name and the second play in its opening season is Resurrection, Maureen Lawrence's account of the relationship between the writer and his companion.

Lawrence first heard about Francis Barber almost a decade ago. "I was writer-in-residence at Derby Playhouse when Annie Castledine, the director, asked me to write a tribute to Johnson. Apparently, every year on the anniversary of his father's death, he would stand bare-headed, in all weathers, by his father's bookstall in the market square in Uttoxeter. He felt guilt about his ingratitude to his father and wished to show this publicly. Every year this event is commemorated with a public eulogy. I had a weekend to research Johnson. At first, when I found that he had kept a slave, I was horrified, but as I read on I grew to respect him and then identify with him - not his greatness, but his humanity, his philanthropy."

Lawrence has a particular reason to feel close to Johnson: she and her husband, who are both white, adopted two black sons. They are now grown-up, independent and successful, but at the time she became interested in Barber "they were at the most difficult, vulnerable, stage - teenagers". The younger one was brutally beaten up by skinheads and she admits that her portrayal of Johnson reflects something of her own over-protectiveness as a parent.

The play, uncommissioned, was written fast, with passion - "It wrote itself in about six days" - and was eventually produced at the Bush in London, where, directed by Annie Castledine, it won an LWT award in 1997. Castledine sent a copy to her friend, the actor Corin Redgrave and he promised that if ever the right occasion arose he would appear in it. The opening of the theatre at Lichfield, where Redgrave is leading the season, presented that opportunity. He plays Johnson and is joined in the two-hander by Jeffery Kissoon as Barber.

A modern playwright, then, with a personal perspective on the story, Lawrence has not shrunk from the tensions between the characters, pitting well-meant quasi-parental anxiety against a desire for freedom. The known facts - gleaned from Boswell's life of Johnson, academic articles and household documents - are more-or-less faithfully rendered; "the only parts invented are the feelings". There is affection and equality in the imagined conversations and sometimes irritation, but no sentimentality. Johnson and his companion are interdependent: when Frank runs away to join the Navy, making what seems to be a bid for independence, Johnson pulls strings to buy him out, apparently without consulting him. Lawrence says that she has channelled Johnson's sense of obligation, his loneliness, guilt and devotion to religion into his relationship with Frank. But for her Johnson is more than a legendary historical figure; he is also a representative white man.

Less is known about Barber. He too stands for something, for exploited people, and only speaks at length in the second act when he is on his deathbed conversing with an imagined Johnson. While Lawrence has attempted to catch something of Johnson's "orotund" style and sprinkled his speech with references to the Bible and Shakespeare to indicate his learning ("He would probably have chosen Latin and Greek but I couldn't do that."), she has less to go on for Barber. "He would probably have been taught to speak well and may have had a more received pronunciation than Johnson himself. He's free to speak in the second act, because this is in his head and he can express all that pent-up emotion. It is the confidence that comes from righteous indignation that informs his last speech. As long as he was in Johnson's house, he remained a boy." But this last impassioned outcry is more than personal: with his "cover me in white oblivion" and the final statement, "Even my name is not my own", he is speaking for generations of the oppressed.

Barber died in poverty, perhaps unable to manage his inheritance, but his children travelled and prospered and some of his descendants, no longer bearing any visible trace of their Jamaican forebear, still live near Lichfield. Dennis Barber, 72, a smallholder near Market Drayton who has researched his family history, will be proud to be in attendance at the theatre.

It is as well Frank Barber is remembered with affection and for literary reasons. As a pauper, he was buried in an unmarked grave.

'Resurrection': Garrick, Lichfield (01543 412121), tomorrow to 18 October