This Bitter Earth by Harrison David Rivers is an intimate, romantic and gripping play about a young black writer and his white activist lover that asks, “What is the real cost of standing on the sidelines?”
Originally commissioned and produced by the New Conservatory Theatre Centre in San Francisco in 2017, This Bitter Earth has since enjoyed multiple productions, including a run in New York. Now, Soho Theatre have mounted a new production—marking the UK directorial debut of Grammy, Emmy, and three-time Tony Award winner Billy Porter.
This Bitter Earth follows Jesse, a young black man, who encounters Neil, a young white man who has unwittingly found himself at the front of the crowd with a megaphone at the Million Hoodie March in 2012. Flash forward several weeks, and Jesse and Neil have begun dating. However, as the months pass and Neil works his way further into the world of activism, Jesse never enters it.
Over the years, Jesse and Neil negotiate the complex “firsts” of their relationship against a backdrop of political demonstrations and discord. With history unfolding around them every day, Jesse and Neil must contend with the fact that, no matter their response to social turmoil, they cannot remain untouched by it.
For Soho Theatre, Billy Porters directs Omari Douglas (C4’s It’s a Sin – BAFTA nomination, Constellations alongside Russell Tovey in the West End – Olivier Award Best Actor nomination and Cliff in original West End cast of Cabaret at the KitKat Club) as Jesse and Alexander Lincoln (cult gay rugby movie In From the Side – Best Actor winner & Best Breakthrough Performance nomination, Jamie Tate in over 300 episodes of Emmerdale, Everything I Know About Love, BBC1) as Neil.
As activist Neil, Alexander Lincoln gives a strong performance. Acknowledging his privilege early on, Lincoln’s Neil is conscious of his ability to contribute to meaningful action while attempting to love Jesse the best way he knows how. He portrays Neil with clarity and conviction—someone who not only understands the stakes but is determined to stand up, speak out and hold space, even when it complicates his personal life. Lincoln balances Neil’s passion with vulnerability, revealing a man who is both politically awakened and emotionally venerable. His chemistry with Omari Douglas’s Jesse crackles with intensity, underscoring the difficult but necessary conversations at the heart of the text.
Omari Douglas gives an intensely profound and emotionally layered performance as Jesse. With remarkable precision and depth, Douglas guides the audience through Jesse’s inner world—witty and disarming one moment, raw and aching the next. His portrayal captures the quiet weight of a man navigating love, grief, and identity in a world that demands constant resilience. Douglas moves effortlessly between humour and heartbreak, taking us from laughter to stillness to gut-wrenching silence with a subtlety that never feels forced. It’s a performance that lingers—measured, magnetic, and deeply affecting.
Billy Porter directs with a tender, human touch, crafting a production that feels both intimate and resonant.
Through a series of fragmented scenes, the audience is invited to witness Jesse and Neil’s ongoing effort to build their lives—never perfect, often painful, but always rooted in a sincere desire to make love work.
Jesse and Neil live in a world that is increasingly phobic and politically volatile, marked by far-right ideologies and the brutality of systemic injustice—in other words, the world we live in today. Yet amidst this turbulence, they keep trying—trying to understand each other, to hold space for one another and to create a world in which they can love and be loved freely.
Porter leans into the vulnerability of that persistence, allowing space for silence, conflict, and connection to coexist. In showing two people who refuse to give up on love—even when everything around them threatens it—Porter captures something profoundly moving and powerfully relatable.
This Bitter Earth is a haunting meditation on love, identity and the weight of the world we inherit and inhabit. With standout performances from Omari Douglas and Alexander Lincoln and sensitive, heartfelt direction from Billy Porter, the play doesn’t pretend to have all the answers—but it speaks with real truth.
This Bitter Earth is a powerful reminder that while the personal is always political, it’s also deeply human and that sometimes, simply stepping out your front door can be an act of defiance, just like choosing to love despite everything. In a world that often tries to hold us back, living authentically becomes its own form of resistance.
★★★★
Reviewed by Stuart James
