The cast of Slave Play at Noël Coward Theatre (Image: Helen Murray) The clue is in the title. The absence of a definite or indefinite article suggests that Jeremy O Harris’s play may not be all that we expect. And so it is, or rather, isn’t.
One of the most controversial plays ever to appear on Broadway it arrives in Britain with pre-packed provocation. The presence of Kit Harington as Jim, the only English character in an otherwise all-American play, is a smart piece of trans-cultural casting. Harington proves once again that he can hold the stage as well as anyone and goes beyond the call of duty by getting his, er, kit off in the final scenes.
Olivia Washington (Kaneisha) and Kit Harington (Jim) in Slave Play at Noël Coward Theatre. (Image: Helen Murray) Director Robert O’Hara’s production displays trigger warnings that include nudity, simulated sex and more N-words than a Tarantino movie. Set in two eras - to say more would be to spoil a coup de theatre - it opens in an antebellum Southern plantation where relations between slaves and masters and/or mistresses is complex, to say the least.
An extraordinary amount of sexual shenanigans takes place (intimacy director Claire Warden had her work cut out) that leads to an interrogation into miscegenation, ie sexual congress between different races. function loadOvpScript(){let el=document.createElement('script');el.
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