Taking inspiration from trumpet player Miles Davis and his album Kind of Blue (1959), MILES. has arrived at Southwark Playhouse following rave reviews in Edinburgh last summer.
Davis (1926-1991) would have celebrated his centenary last year. This play, written and directed by Oliver Kaderbhai from a concept by Jay Phelps, is part musical exploration, part biopic. Kaderbhai is the artistic director of Delirium, a theatre company that aims to “put ordinary people in extraordinary situations”.
In MILES. a struggling musician (Phelps, an accomplished jazz trumpeter by profession) meets the ghost of Davis (Benjamin Akintuyosi, in his debut role).
It’s the year of Kind of Blue, and although Davis lived for 32 years after, his 1959 self is the one who is in the spotlight, prone and still as we walk in. Then he’s sarcastic and forthright, cigarette in hand, as the musician he calls “Dave” tries to replicate his sound.
It’s a play that throws a lot of dates, events, and people at you. The men who peopled Davis’s band. Those who influenced him – Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Clark Terry, Thelonious Monk. Both actors portray these extra characters in small, telling moments, while their archive footage and photos flicker on the wall.
In one technical flourish, the young Miles tells us of the appeal of French chanteuse Juliette Gréco while her video image flutters across his white t-shirt. Later, his iconic band on Kind of Blue are given their due – John Coltrane, Cannonball Adderley, Bill Evans, Paul Chambers, Jimmy Cobb. Two days in the studio.
The music is primary and primal in MILES., offering a snapshot of how feeling, rhythm and skill weave together. Phelps captures the sound of the moment where jazz bubbled through Harlem and lived in the darkest of nightclubs.
There are the usual biographical difficulties with women, drugs and money, far from unique to Davis, who overcame a heroin addiction that saw him shoot up at his baby’s bedside and steal from those who loved him.
Akintuyosi offers a performance of physical strength and quiet resolution. He catches the rasp of the Davis voice after nicotine and surgery took away its smoothness. He’s cocky enough to dismiss reports he underpaid his musicians and took credit for their work.
He even encourages Phelps to join him in a tap routine, describing it a marriage of race and culture. Davis is black, but privileged – misquoting the famous Porgy and Bess line “My daddy was rich, and my momma good looking.”
Jazz is rich, but also dirty. It’s the tone, the touch, the timing. As “Dave” runs the old tapes he manifests the whole history of the genre into which he adds DJ dubbing and individuality.
This is not a typical play, although it offers something about Miles Davis as a child, a husband, and an addict. It is the interplay between the two men, helped by Alex Lewer’s perceptive lighting and Will Tonna’s clean sound design, that you lean in to learn.
A high recommendation from me.
****
MILES. continues at Southwark Playhouse Borough until 7 Mar 2026 with details here.
Photo credit: Colin J Smith