Review: This Bitter Earth directed by Billy Porter at Soho Theatre London

A thrilling, intimate production instantly and winningly breaking the fourth wall, and then delivering a shattering, fragmentary, non-linear portrait of a passionate but troubled relationship of a gay, interracial couple, Neil and Jesse – against a US backdrop of race, inequality, and police brutality.

Show poster :This Bitter Earth at Soho Theatre, London

The play, This Bitter Earth‘s timeline is marked by the deaths of Black Americans Trayvon Martin in 2012, Michael Brown in 2014, and Freddie Gray, and the Charleston church shooting in 2015 – powerfully retold in words and rolling screen of newsprint and flickering TV.

Neil Finley-Darden is an enthusiastic activist from a wealthy background involved in the Black Lives Matter movement, and Jesse Howard is an introspective Black playwright from a modest, religious background, studying at university on a scholarship.

Neil and Jesse are unexpectedly united in the poetry and politically charged words of Essex Hemphill, a celebrated African-American, gay poet. Both can recite the words of poem For My Own Protection – ‘If whales, snails, dogs, cats / Chrysler and Nixon can be saved, / the lives of Black men are priceless / and can be saved.’

How is it, Jesse wonders, that this privileged white guy came to memorise a poem by the obscure niche author who had inspired Jesse to write? How is that Jesse, a ‘double minority’, is accused of “inaction” regarding police violence and racism and responds: “I’m living my life. What more do you want?”.  “I worry about you,” Neil tells Jesse when the latter returns from grocery shopping.  Jesse quips that he’s not going to get killed “at Whole Foods.” While we are looking at this mixed-race gay couple through the lens of racism there lurks a threat of homophobia, and an epiphany no-one sees coming.

Billy Porter makes a convincing UK directorial debut with this tragic Harrison David Rivers’ play all about love and activism. Alexander Lincoln (Netflix’s In from the Side) as Neil and Omari Douglas (Lavender, Hyacinth, Violet, Yew at the Bush) as Jesse are both exemplary in their roles.

As so often these days, it gets a bit shouty, Neil is the eager-to-please, but angry, Golden Retriever of a boyfriend to Jesse’s Jack Russell, snarling back with bitter words. It’s relentless, I doubt their relationship would  last the three or so years of the play. The snogging is there, the getting to know you chat is there – bonding over the Cosby Show, but there’s little tenderness and no real jeopardy. Neil bringing his partner home for dinner without telling his Upper East side parents he’s poor and black, and Jesse blanking Neil’s friends who had perhaps come to be shown all his protesting is backed up by having a black boyfriend, seemed to be revealing of Neil’s motivation. Why Jesse, who is glad white men are brought up softer falls for Neil is questionable.

Morgan Large (set and costume design) has done a terrific job with a sliding screen revealing the timeline of their urban apartment and stylish costume touches with Jesse’s white shirt with a one button boxy jacket and some very stylish sneakers for Neil.

The actual news may be dated but the struggle is still real in this tale of love and loss to the background of a world, sadly, still on fire.

I leave with a tear in my eye to the closing music lyrics of  “what good is love, that no one shares?”

This Bitter Earth

Wed 18 Jun – Sat 26 Jul 25

90 minutes

This Bitter Earth