A play exploring the historic night that Muhammad Ali won the heavyweight championship against Sonny Liston in 1964 will make its UK debut at the Donmar Warehouse in London.
One Night in Miami, by Kemp Powers, offers a fictional account of the night Ali, who back then still fought under his name Cassius Clay, celebrated his world heavyweight victory in a hotel room with three of the most important figures of the generation: campaigner Malcolm X, singer Sam Cooke and footballer Jim Brown. The play is set against the backdrop of social change and the stirring civil rights movement.
Ali, the most celebrated boxer of his generation, died in June. The artistic director of the Donmar, Josie Rourke, said that the play “has taken on a new and added poignancy”. It will be directed by Kwame Kwei-Armah, and the cast includes Sope Dirisu as Cassius Clay, David Ajala as Jim Brown, Francois Battiste as Malcolm X and Arinze Kene as Sam Cooke.
The autumn season at the Donmar will also see Olivier-nominated Gemma Arterton take on the role of martyred French hero Joan of Arc, in a new production of George Bernard Shaw’s Saint Joan.
The play, which was first published in 1924 after the Roman Catholic canonisation of Joan of Arc, was based around the records of her life, imprisonment and subsequent trial in England in 1431. The French heroine was found guilty of various charges, including heresy and cross-dressing, and was burned at the stake aged just 19.
Arterton follows in the footsteps of actors such as Dame Sybil Thorndike and Dame Joan Plowright who played the part on the stage, and Jean Seberg who played the French heroine on film in 1957.
The production will be directed by Rourke, who said she had been longing to stage the play, and described Arterton as “one of our most luminous and compelling” stage actors.
The new season will also finally see the opening of the temporary Donmar theatre in King’s Cross. The venue will stage an all-female Shakespeare trilogy, directed by Phyllida Lloyd, in productions of Julius Caesar, Henry VI and The Tempest, all set in a women’s prison.
Rourke said the productions would be “genuinely groundbreaking”, adding: “I am immensely proud to be presenting a season of work in which female and diverse voices take on great figures of history and great roles from the canon.”
