The Lady from the Sea

by Henrik Ibsen, adapted by Elinor Cook

seen at the Donmar Warehouse on 12 October 2017

Kwami Kwei-Armah directs Finbar Lynch as Doctor Wangel and Nikki Amuka-Bird as Ellida, with Helena Wilson as Bolette, Ellie Bamber as Hilde, Jonny Holden as Lyngstrand, Tom McKay as Arnholm, Jim Findley as Ballestred and Jake Fairbrother as the Stranger, in a version of Ibsen's play reset by Tom Scutt in the Caribbean in the late 1940s or early 1950s (the tutor Arnholm limps from a war wound from 1943).

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 Sopé Dìrisù 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.