By Neil Durham

WORTH A LOOK?: ****1/2

WHEN?: Saturday 7 February, opens 17 February and runs through 11 April 2026 RUNTIME: 195 minutes (including a 20-minute interval)

Respect is due to Black Panther star and Oscar-nominated actor Chadwick Boseman who also wrote this play about US police brutality in 2005 years before his film career took off.

• Read on for reasons including how this timely material and hip hop template makes for a bold, entertaining and hugely thought provoking evening

Boseman died aged just 43 in 2020 after suffering colon cancer and Deep Azure is inspired by the real-life shooting of his Howard University classmate in Washington DC, Prince Jones.

Denzel Washington (National Theatre Q&A and Fences) helped fund a visit by Boseman in 1998 to the Oxford Summer Program of the British American Drama Academy at Balliol College, Oxford, where he developed a love of Shakespeare.

Deep Azure is a hip hop musical before Hamilton (Victoria Palace) using beatboxers rather than instruments and sung accapella delivered in rhyme and drawing on the vivid texture of Shakespeare’s language while remaining true to Boseman’s South Carolina roots.

Director Tristan Fynn-Aiduenu (For Black Boys Who Have Considered Suicide When The Hue Gets Too Heavy, Apollo Theatre) takes to the stage before this 1st preview to explain cast illness means some participants have switched roles with little notice.

The candlelit Sam Wanamaker Playhouse forms part of Shakespeare’s Globe and was built using 17th century plans for an indoor English theatre resembling Blackfriars Theatre which existed in Shakespeare’s time.

The throng is sat on wooden benches in this intimate 340-seater venue and the cast descend steps from the stage into the audience pit to exit while also making use of a balcony above it and can be heard occasionally circling the galleries chanting in protest as the action unfolds.

Deep, played by a charismatic and angelic Jayden Elijah, is for the most part seen as a ghost in particular to his intended, Selina Jones’ troubled Azure, after he is followed by a policeman in his car and killed after an altercation.

Azure is wracked by an eating disorder and body image issues while mourning the death of her fiance and seeking justice through a legal system which appears too tight with the police upholding the law in a predicament all too familiar decades after this lyrical musical was 1st written.

Special mention to both Elijah Cook as Tone and Justice Ritchie as Roshad who play friends of the couple who aren’t quite all they seem and plot their own retribution for the wrongs done to Deep.

This is the 1st preview of a UK premiere and it’s a pleasure to be part of the most diverse audience we’ve ever seen in a London theatre, and particularly this space, which reacts so audibly and with such surprise at some of this show’s more outlandish plot twists.

Deep Azure is about trying to find peace after tragedy and we expect it to lose a little of its length and the reverence with which it is performed here before its imminent press night.

What would Chadwick Boseman think? It’s wildly ambitious, imperfect but in this atmospheric setting with a hugely talented cast and director its timely material and hip hop template makes for a bold, entertaining and hugely thought provoking evening.

• Main pictures via Facebook courtesy Globe Theatre Tickets
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