Deep Azure review – musical marvels in Chadwick Boseman’s hip-hop tragedy

2026-02-18 - 13:43

Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, London The Black Panther actor’s melding of social commentary and Shakespearean themes is sometimes opaque yet undeniably poetic Chadwick Boseman was not only an accomplished actor and Marvel superhero before his untimely death in 2020. Perhaps best known as T’Challa in Black Panther, he was also a writer – and this 2005 play bares all the lost promise of his talents. It is an ambitious, sprawling, music-filled story of a Black woman, Azure (Selina Jones), mourning her fiance, Deep (Jayden Elijah), who has been killed by a police officer. Inspired by the 2000 death of a university student, Prince Jones, it splices the theme of police violence in the US with a Shakespearean plot of jealousy, injustice, revenge and grief. Continue reading...