Just over the Thames, the Young Vic is currently reviving The Mountaintop, Katori Hall’s dramatic hagiography of Martin Luther King Jr. At the Donmar, a rather different “watershed moment in 1960s black American history” play has its British opening.

Kemp Powers’ drama (which premiered in Los Angeles in 2013) unfolds in real time in a Miami hotel room in 1964. Its lead characters are Cassius Clay, who that evening has beaten Sonny Liston for the world heavyweight boxing championship; Jim Brown, beginning his transition from footballing phenomenon to film actor; Sam Cooke, at the height of his singing career as a gospel-to-soul pioneer; and Malcolm X, who has been Clay’s mentor in introducing him to the Nation of Islam and his subsequent identity as Muhammad Ali, but who is himself on the verge of being jettisoned by the Nation.

We see 90 minutes that are part-victory party (the meeting is imaginary, but the four were indeed friends in real life), part-banter, part-series of debates and even argy-bargies on various aspects of black issues. Powers may not go much beyond the standard historical character portraits, but this is a play of words and ideas, and those are powerfully articulated and counterposed without bias.

The obvious hook of the drama is Clay (Sope Dirisu), and Kwame Kwei-Armah’s electric production begins with an animated re-enactment of the Liston fight to draw us in before things get talky. However, the meat of the matter consists of impassioned exchanges between Malcolm X and Cooke about whether the latter should assimilate into mainstream entertainment culture or speak out. Francois Battiste walks a fine line between Malcolm’s slightly affected articulacy and his unquestionable commitment to his ideals, while Arinzé Kene (no slouch as a playwright himself) not only speaks but sings a sweetly authentic storm as Cooke, culminating in “A Change Is Gonna Come”. (Powers rightly sees no need to spell out that within a year of this evening each of the two would be shot dead.)

Much of the remainder of the run is already booked solid; in terms of its content, however, it is very definitely – to quote Keith LeBlanc’s 1983 hip-hop sample montage of Malcolm X – no sell out.

Written for the Financial Times.