Jeremy O Harris’ much-heralded Slave Play arrives at the Noël Coward Theatre, determined to make an impact
“Our bodies
told us that it won’t
fit
for civ’lized eyes”
Over the course of three differently, but equally, intense movements, Jeremy O Harris’ Slave Play is unflinching and uncompromising in its ripping away of the sticking plaster that is barely holding 21st century American society together. As it probes into the many intersections of race, identity and sexuality in eyecatching ways, it makes no effort to cover up what it has exposed, a raw truth that can’t – and shouldn’t – be ignored.
It opens on a Southern plantation where we see three different couples engaging in some rather risqué behaviour in their sexual encounters. Kaneisha is a slave eating melon off the floor at the command of Jim with his whip, Southern belle Alana is prevailing on her mixed-race servant Phillip to let her do what she wants to him in the bedroom, Black overseer Gary is enjoying his dominance over white servant Dustin by likewise ordering him to submit to his every desire.
But as the Rihanna-twerking, dildo-riding, boot-licking scenarios play out, it is clear that something else is going on and that is revealed in the second act, which shows us that these are three contemporary interracial couples engaging in role play (see how the title hides in plain sight!), a kind of sex therapy designed to address the crises being felt by the Black partners in their relationships, reaching back to the deep-seated trauma of slavery and how that is threaded through US society.
This middle section takes the form of a group therapy session, led by lesbian interracial couple Teá and Patricia (dealing with their own issues), and full of decided unease. As race, sex and power dynamics come under the microscope, Harris keeps us on edge as he mixes biting comedy with sharp racial reckoning, sometimes in the same speech. Each couple gets a bit closer to an essential truth but it isn’t easy listening for them (or for us), a stark acknowledgement of the enormity of its subject.
Robert O’Hara directs, as he did on Broadway, what is then essentially a very US-focused play, its complexities perhaps able to sit at a bit of a remove for UK audiences, whether in its antebellum history or the particular brand of therapy-speak being lampooned. It also feels a touch long, the mirrored panels of Clint Ramos’ set unrelenting in leaving so much exposed. But it is compellingly acted, Fisayo Akinade and James Cusati-Moyer’s gay couple the strongest in the group, Olivia Washington and Kit Harington’s Kaneisha and Jim the sole focus of the final act. And it will make you think.
