One Night in Miami ...

by Kemp Powers

seen at the Donmar Warehouse on 17 November 2016

The play, directed by Kwame Kwei-Armah and designed by Robert Jones, features Sope Dirisu as Cassius Clay, David Ajala as Jim Brown, Arinzé Kene as Sam Cooke, Francois Battiste as Malcom X, Dwane Walcott as Kareem and Josh Williams as Jamaal. It takes place in a hotel in Miami on the evening after Cassius Clay won the world heavyweight title from Sonny Liston and on the eve of his announcement that he would henceforth be known as Muhammed Ali.

The hotel room is bland and anonymous, and rendered more austere though needing to accommodate the teetotal and rather prim Malcolm X; it is clearly far from the celebrations associated with the fight and Clay's victory - but as Malcolm points out Clay would not be welcome as a guest in the more upmarket Miami hotels no matter what he had just achieved. 

The play reveals tensions amongst the man characters - Clay is full of energy and self-assurance, though unprepared for there being more than one way of regarding his proposed association with the Nation of Islam. Jim Brown is considering a move from professional football to Hollywood, while Sam Cooke is attempting to profit in business terms from the cut-throat world of commercial recording. Malcolm X's puritanical admonishments do not go down well with Cooke; but the resentments of the not yet politicised black community against figures such as Malcolm get a fair hearing as well. The play is a little contrived in managing the logistics of these conversations - some exits to the bathroom or to the street outside are somewhat stagey - but the debate is worth hearing even at fifty years' remove - perhaps especially so given the state of race relations in the US. Where the final televised moments of the Clay/Liston fight were projected on the wall above the set as the play opens, we see the face of President-elect Donald Trump at the end.

The performances were excellent, Francois Battiste so apparently calm with his formidable intellect, only revealing his own nervous tension by occasional gestures, and his own uncertain position within the movement only hinted at towards the close of the play. After seeming extremely insensitive to the opinions of others, he gave a moving account of having been at one of Sam Cooke's concerts. 

Sope Dirisu showed us the youthful energy and overwhelming confidence of the young fighter, brimming over with infectious enthusiasm and self-belief. Interestingly it was only as he left the hotel room to face some reporters that his demeanour changed into the brash stridency of his 'I am the greatest!' claims. 

Arinzé Kene gave perhaps the most sympathetic portrayal of the singer Sam Cooke, someone determined not to be screwed by the system, and therefore approaching the music world in a manner bound to fall short of the standards set by the activist Nation of Islam. His rendition of two Sam Cooke songs was wonderfully done, provoking cheers from the audience - but, in strictly dramatic terms, this was perhaps an indication that the play itself was not strong enough to stand on its own - the sentimental appeal of the song A Change is Gonna Come could hardly fail to resonate quite apart from any context it was placed in.