Omari Douglas and Alexander Lincoln warn new queer show might make you ‘uncomfortable’

As soon as Omari Douglas read the first monologue in Harrison David Rivers’ play This Bitter Earth, he felt a deep, visceral connection to it.

“I just saw a lot of myself. I just felt a lot of those feelings. It just felt real to me, like real in the emotional sense,” he says, looking skyward, clutching his heart, legs curled up on a chair in a large rehearsal space in a south London university. His co-star, Emmerdale and A Night Like This star Alexander Lincoln sits close by, listening.

The pair are starring in the Billy Porter-directed This Bitter Earth at London’s Soho Theatre until the end of July. Douglas is best known for his roles in Russell T Davies’ critically-lauded AIDS drama It’s A Sin and Netflix’s spy thriller Black Doves, but he’s pretty well-versed in theatreland, too; he was a marvel in Lavender, Hyacinth, Violet, Yew earlier this year, and a criminally underused presence in the West End adaptation of Hanya Yanagihara’s A Little Life.

Here though, he plays Jesse, a “very particular, introspective” playwright. “There is a steeliness about him too,” Douglas says, a glint in his eye that says even he’s still working to figure the character out (at the time we speak, the pair have only had three rehearsal days together). “I think that he’s very protective of himself. You have to earn his openness.”

Jesse meets his white boyfriend Neil (Lincoln) at the Million Hoodie March in 2012: the rally was held in New York following the killing of Black Florida-based teen Trayvon Martin, and the play is set between 2012 and 2015. Rivers began writing the play in 2015, in the wake of a number of brutal killings of Black Americans, including Martin, but also Michael Brown, and Tamir Rice, and Freddie Gray, and Eric Garner, and Jamar Clark, and countless others.

Neil is at the front of the crowd, hanging from a statue, chanting into a bullhorn. As Jesse and Neil’s relationship progresses, so too does Neil’s involvement in anti-racism activism, while his frustration at Jesse’s presumed political apathy grows. “As much as he is privileged, I do think there’s a grounding to him, at least in some ways,” Lincoln explains of his character, already wearing an American accent in preparation. “He is a fighter and he wants to change the world, which I think many of us do”. And yet, “there is naivety to him”.

Neil wants Jesse to be more proactive in his role in the Black Lives Matter movement. “You’re just standing there, doing nothing,” he says in one scene. “I’m not doing nothing, Neil. I’m living my life,” comes Jesse’s telling reply. Over three years, Jesse and Neil quietly unpick how they can love each other unconditionally, in the face of their innately different life experiences.

Despite the heavy and ever-relevant context for the play, “the main theme is about love,” says Douglas. “It’s about love between two people, but it’s about how do you love yourself?” Lincoln agrees: “If you actually think about what [love] is, because it’s a hard thing, it’s a choice, and to me, that’s what the play feels like it’s about. It’s the choice to love.”

Most of the couple’s conversations take place in personal spaces, be it a bedroom or cab. While external events prompt their discussions, they don’t necessarily root them in any specific era. “You’re not playing the period,” says Omari, who, despite feeling under the weather when we meet, writes his passion for the project clearly across his face. “It just feels very present to be honest, because you could literally replace events with now. They will be having the same conversations right now. Jesse and Neil could be having those conversations today.”

It’s true: police killings in the US have continued to rise since the end of 2015, with Black Americans disproportionately affected. Just last year, three-quarters of African Americans said that they face discrimination ‘often’. Campaigners fear the re-election of president Donald Trump has normalised racist sentiment further. There are countless Jesses and Neils across the world this second.

Compared to Omari Douglas’s deep introspection – you can tell he is profoundly affected by Rivers’ script – Alexander Lincoln is animated as he decries how “f**king crazy” it is that America hasn’t come any closer to solving its racism. “You want your art to enact change and then we move on, like, ‘Great, we can go to the next thing’, but we’re still circling the same plug hole,” he sighs.

As a white British man, Lincoln wondered on the first day of rehearsals whether he would “have a voice” in the production of a play that is largely centred on the Black, American experience. “And I absolutely do,” he says. He credits this largely down to the presence of This Bitter Earth’s director, the Emmy, Grammy, and Tony Award-winning Billy Porter. The pair have had mere hours working with Porter at this point, yet both Lincoln and Douglas seem changed by being under the Pose star’s direction.

“There’s just a very present nature about him. He directs from here,” Douglas reflects, pressing his hands into his chest. He seems awestruck. “It feels heart first, message first. He wants to know where we’re coming at it from. He has a vision, of course. It feels like he wants to understand us and how we’re heading into it. For me personally, it’s just great to be able to talk in that way in a rehearsal room, if you catch what I’m getting at.”

And I think I do. Porter, as a fellow Black, queer man working his way through the world, knows the internal conflict and questioning that Jesse has felt, and is privy to what Douglas has experienced moving through life, too. “It’s really, really, really felt like being seen, in a way that you’re not having to fight for. There’s almost like a shorthand already,” he stresses. “It feels like we’re working in a way that just feels really soulful for me.”

Even for Lincoln, Porter’s directing techniques have been revelatory. It sounds like he digests the text through the historical context in which it’s written, the sociopolitical climate of the States today, and his own, deeply personal life experiences. “He’ll break into a story about his life which is completely related to what we’re talking about. I’ve never been in a room like that. I’ve never had rehearsals like that. I’ve never been in the presence of someone like that,” Lincoln gushes. “It’s really something to behold. It’s amazing.”

As for working with each other? “Oh I hate it” and “Terrible” come the instant replies, alongside cracks of laughter. It’s “easy” so far. “Everyone’s listening to each other. It’s not that that doesn’t happen in other instances, but Billy and Harrison are great collaborators, and so it’s nice to be able to just kind of join into that,” Douglas says. But “we’ll see like three weeks in,” Lincoln jokes. “Do the follow up in a few weeks.”

There certainly seems to be a bond forming between them, which is lucky. “Billy’s been talking about how the really important thing for him is that despite it all, [Jesse and Neil] always come back to love,” Douglas says. “They’re constantly fighting for love,” Lincoln nods in agreement. “If you don’t see any point in fighting, then don’t. Here’s these two characters that do.”

Though activism and social justice are part of the play’s core, it’s not “didactic”, Douglas adds. Rivers told PinkNews that he hopes audience members will leave feeling “hugged”, rather than say, with questions unequivocally answered or traumas healed.

Lincoln hopes that watching the play will at least spark conversations. “I’ve never had discussions in this way about race with friends because, you know, you don’t necessarily. You’re not going to ask, ‘What is it like?’” As he sees it, people are too scared of saying the wrong things, or being caught up in black and white thinking. “We’re just not talking anymore.”

This Bitter Earth shows the power of having the conversations we’re too afraid to have. “They’re a couple who have conversations that are really uncomfortable. That makes it sound a bit trivial. They have the big conversations, conversations that I think an audience will probably feel uncomfortable hearing at times,” Douglas says. “And yet, they love each other.”

This Bitter Earth is at London’s Soho Theatre until 26 July.

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