A provocative exploration of power, sex and race in this polarising and messy examination in Jeremy O. Harris’ triptych-pastiche UK debut of the antebellum South.

Controversy and awards have followed Slave Play from the moment writer Jeremy O. Harris staged a black-out performance during its original run in New York. The play is essentially a group therapy session via proxies of multiple lovers exploring bedroom dynamics. It opens with a young, enslaved woman, Kaneisha (Washington) evocatively dancing before her overseer, Jim (Harington), comes in. What follows is confusing: Kaneisha confidently tries to seduce an increasingly apologetic Jim. They exit and two similar scenes play out with two different couples: Phillip (Heffernan) and Alana (McNamara), a mulatto boy and wife of a plantation owner, and Gary (Akinade) and Dustin (Cusati-Moyer), a black overseer and indentured servant. Each couple explores sexual, race and power dynamics. The second act transforms into a group therapy session where it is revealed that the first act was a radical form of therapy where these dynamics are discussed, before a final act is played out between Kaneisha and Jim.

As a conceit, Slave Play is intriguing. The second act highlights the difficulties of having discussions around race and power without first acknowledging and confronting and dismantling established race and power dynamics. O’Hara and his creative team deserve credit for teasing out the conflict in myriad ways: from the back of the stage being a mirror, combining with Lindsay Jones musical composition to stain the audience, makes the audience complicit observers in the events taking place, at times joyous and at others deeply unsettling.

Of the couples, Gary (Akinde) and Dustin’s (Cusati-Moyer) arcs are the standout. Their relationship feels the most authentic and in them, O. Harris’s script brings together the messy reality of relationships and trauma in a beautifully complete and nuanced way – a nuance that struggles to emerge from the other couples that instead feel light; Washington and Harington give extraordinary performances but their characters interactions don’t ring with the same authenticity.

Sexual violence bookends the play and whilst it is, by its very nature, powerful, the conclusion of the final act borders on a gratuity that doesn’t push forward the discussion that its inclusion necessitates. Discussion about race, identity and power are constantly evolving and O. Harris seeks to strip away the niceties and euphemisms that serve as fig leaves for truly repulsive violence. What’s left is a mess, and, one rather suspects, that is the point.

Check out more from Noël Coward Theatre| Find out more about Jeremy O.Harris | Robert O’Hara | Fisayo Akinade | Kit Harington |
| See more Off/Stage Review Bytes on IG |