“Everything in life is a performance,” writes Jeremy O Harris in the introduction to his script of Slave Play , the Broadway sensation that at last arrives in London for a limited season. There was certainly some advance performative hoo-ha about the two “black out nights” that have been designated especially for audience members of colour . In myriad ways this drama, which examines the roles we play whether we intend to or not, is going to get people talking, at volume.
It fizzes with provocative ideas, but it is also uneven and, at more than two hours without interval, excessively baggy. The first scene opens on the MacGregor Plantation in the generic US Deep South, where black slave woman Kaneisha (Olivia Washington) wiggles provocatively in front of laconic white overseer Mister Jim ( Kit Harington ). Then the focus switches to white mistress Alana (Annie McNamara, excellent) acting out her bedroom fantasies with her “mulatto” Phillip (Aaron Heffernan).
Read Next Mnemonic at the National Theatre really drags It quickly becomes apparent that we are watching both a literal and metaphorical play on racial and sexual stereotypes – and also that there is going to be enough provocative racial language to detonate a thousand trigger warnings. All this is before we reach black master Gary (Fisayo Akinade) and his white slave Dustin (James Cusati-Moyer), whom he insists calls him the N-word while he pleasures him. Occasional knowing gestures from the actors indicate .
