For many years James Baldwin resisted writing a play because he deemed US theatre "timid". But then he heard the story of a white man in Mississippi acquitted of murdering a young black man, Emmett Till. After the court case, the accused admitted to a journalist that he had killed Till.
This story became the loose base for Blues for Mr Charlie, Baldwin's 1964 drama that is anything but timid. Written a year after Martin Luther King's "I have a dream" speech, and set in the racially segregated fictional community of Plaguetown, the play seethes at the blindness that comes with unthinking opposition, not only between blacks and whites, but also within communities. Uncompromising in his portrayal of both sides of the racial divide, Baldwin doesn't flinch from trying to understand the white murderer, and he shows the black community lost between turning the other cheek and violent revenge for oppression; its questions remain urgent and uncomfortable 40 years on.
A long first act sets the troubling scene, unfolding the fate of young Richard Henry in flashbacks, fluidly connected with jazz and blues so that a funeral scene, for example, slips into a precious memory of a slow dance. The second act, a fast-paced courtroom drama, takes us to the moment Henry is killed simply for declaring himself equal to a white man.
The large cast features breathtakingly strong performances, most notably Rolf Saxon as the liberal white journalist Parnell James, Michael Price as Henry, and Sharon Duncan-Brewster as Juanita, the young woman who has just four days of love with Henry before his murder. Paulette Randall's direction balances the weight and poetry of the play, relishing the savage relevance of its message but also its few gentle moments of love, laughter and hope.
· Until July 10. Box office: 020-7328 1000.
