With theatres closed until spring, it’s a boon that leading screen streaming services offer adaptations of two of the most powerful modern American dramas.

Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom
Netflix

One Night in Miami
Amazon Prime

With theatres closed until spring, it’s a boon that leading screen streaming services offer adaptations of two of the most powerful modern American dramas. A further impetus to watch is that both deal with one of the most urgent US political issues – race.

Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom is 10 per cent of one of the mountain ranges of theatre writing. Between 1982 and 2005, August Wilson wrote a cycle of 10 plays, each set in the African-American community in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in one decade of the twentieth century. This one is time-stamped 1927, as Ma Rainey (Viola Davis) lays down some new tracks, amid a power struggle with some members of the band.

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