Review: SLAVE PLAY at Noel Coward

Stuart King 11 July, 2024, 09:01

Another Broadway transfer has just landed in the West End, and given London’s multicultural make-up, together with its largely accepting normalisation of therapy and interracial couples’ counselling, it should prove an interesting, welcome and altogether exciting and challenging addition to the capital’s theatre skyline. On Broadway, SLAVE PLAY secured a record breaking 12 Tony nominations for a play, and if this evening’s opening was anything to go by, it may just achieve an equivalent feat this side of the Atlantic.

Slave Play at Noel Coward Theatre. Photo by Helen Murray

Headlining this production in something of an anti-hero part, is Kit Harington, but this is very much a collective ensemble piece with all 8 cast members given meaty and disconcerting roles to play-out. We first encounter our three interracial couples engaged in various sexual fantasy scenarios in a Southern States plantation setting, focused on racial stereotypes and designed to empower or release one or other or both from their hang-ups. It would be fair to warn anyone considering attending a performance that the language used, the acts performed, the nudity on display and some of the cerebral and emotional trawling which subsequently transpires, is not only hugely entertaining and thought provoking, but also potentially upsetting, unsettling, disconcerting and humbling.

The programme reveals that a full-time drama therapist was present during the rehearsal period, perhaps demonstrating the production’s total commitment to getting this right, creating a safe environment and enabling complete exploration of some seriously tricky, taxing, triggering and tumultuous reactions to relationship issues. In fact racism, misogyny, culture wars and residual shame all get unwrapped, disrobed, displayed, discussed, examined, prodded, slapped and put under the microscope. It makes one wonder how the cast will manage to cope beyond the first week!

On opening night, along with Harington (Jim) and his long suffering queen, Kaneisha (Olivia Washington), gay couple Gary (Fisayo Akinade) and Dustin (James Cusati-Moyer), along with Phillip (Aaron Heffernan) and Alana (Annie McNamara) challenge and work with experimental therapists Patricia (Irene Sofia Lucio) and Teá (Chalia La Tour) as they attempt to unravel the racial and generational guilt, sexual stereotyping and behavioural tropes which have layered and plagued multicultural society for centuries.

Jeremy O. Harris has created a blistering masterpiece of epic emotional proportions and it will play with your mind long after you’ve left the theatre.