The Debate: Baldwin vs Buckley – Wilton’s Music Hall

Timing is everything they say. The Debate: Baldwin vs Buckley could have not come at a better time. Watching a play that asks “Is the American Dream at the expense of the American Negro?”, just days before the Super Bowl, amid conservative outrage over Puerto Rican Bad Bunny being “not American enough” to perform at this all-American cultural institution, and against the backdrop of renewed ICE arrests, makes the piece feel disturbingly real and urgently demanding.

The play restages the famous 1965 Cambridge debate between James Baldwin, literary leader of the civil rights movements, and William F. Buckley Jr., America’s most prominent conservative intellectual, who took place shortly after the Mississippi civil rights marches. Striking in its simplicity, the staging offers only chairs facing the audience, with official footage framing the performance, setting up the stakes of the debate, its structure, and the atmosphere of the day.

The cast is solid throughout. Arnell Powell commands attention as Baldwin, and Eric T. Miller captures Buckley’s showmanship to a nauseating tee. They are seamlessly supported by an honest Christopher Wareham and a sycophantic Tom Kiteley as secondary speakers.

Now what’s truly fascinating in this play is to witness how conservatism performs itself, both in rhetoric and delivery. 

On the argumentative side, not once are the civil rights not acknowledged — Buckley’s side repeatedly concedes that African Americans have suffered injustice — but the movement’s objective is consistently reframed. In the hands of the conservative speaker, the question gradually becomes: does that injustice require dismantling the American Dream itself? One sharp intervention thankfully points out that Baldwin never once called for the destruction of that dream, exposing how the conservative position subtly shifts the goalposts to own the narrative, all while presenting itself as the voice of reason and framing the other camp as self-victimising.

On the performance side, the contrast of style between Buckley and Baldwin is just as masterful. Buckley, a seasoned public affairs TV host, is all theatrical confidence: false intimacy, dramatic pauses, crooner smile, heels clicking, his studied Northeastern voice doing the heavy lifting while advancing arguments in a cold, self-indulgent logic that strips away not just African Americans but society itself of its humanity.  He seduces the audience, professing his concern and indignation, before suddenly turning into something paternal and unyielding, standing up for his fellow Americans. He doesn’t invite reflection; he points the finger. He is the shepherd herding the sheep, telling them where to look and who to blame.

Baldwin, by contrast, argues psychologically, treating the audience with intellectual respect rather than performing to them.

He allows an intimate glimpse into what the American Dream has done to his community – the very people that have helped build the country and enabled others to succeed on their backs. He exposes the everlasting internal damage of an equality blindly denied. His most devastating point is also the quietest: the quiet erosion of one’s individuation when every gaze carries the reminder of their supposed inferiority.

What makes this production by Christopher McElroen powerful is its restraint. In a mere 60 minutes, without shouting, without overt militancy, it does exactly what it needs to do. It reminds us that politics is not only about organising territory, economy, or protection. It is also about example. And in a world as dramatic as ours presently, it reminds us that all great theatre has to do is indeed to hold that mirror up.

The Debate: Baldwin vs Buckley runs Tuesday 3rd – Saturday 7th February at the Wilton’s Music Hall. https://wiltons.org.uk/

Reviewer: Klervi Gavet

Reviewed: 4th February 2026

North West End UK Rating: