If you believe the UK has a problem with race, watch "Slave Play" and let's talk. If you believe the UK doesn’t have a problem with race, watch "Slave Play" and let's talk. However, race wouldn’t be the only topic of our conversation; we’d need to discuss sexuality, power, intergenerational trauma, and, of course, the unsettling final scene. American playwright Jeremy O. Harris’s "Slave Play" arrives in the West End after walkouts, death threats, bans, and waves of controversy on Broadway. It’s clear why. This piece of harrowing theatre is necessary to remind Britain that it is not free from racism or historical culpability for slavery in America.

A British-American cast. Kinky Brits. And deep-rooted psychological trauma. These are just some of the things that occupied my mind after being released from "Slave Play’s" two-hour grip. The play starts as a farcical orgy set in the Antebellum South where we meet Kaneshia (Olivia Washington) who only wants ‘Massa’ Jim (Kit Harington) to call her ‘Negress’; Mistress Alanna (Annie McNamara) who is enticed by that ‘mulatto magic’ and wants to cuckold her husband by dominating her slave Philip (Aaron Heffernan); and, in a power reversal, Gary (Fisayo Akinade), or as he prefers ‘N*** Gary’, who exploits his slave Dustin (James Cusati-Moyer) by making him erotically lick his boot. The play then flips entirely and becomes a group study in ‘Antebellum Sexual Play Therapy’ where black partners are trying to rediscover passion for their white partners.

The cast of Slave Play at Noël Coward Theatre. Photo Helen Murray.

While it seemed many in the audience watched "Slave Play" blindly, I do not suggest you do. "Slave Play" was head-spinning and deeply triggering at every turn. The play felt extremely alienating and made it difficult for audience members to relate. From black characters who carried deep internalized self-hate and were blind to their racial trauma – Philip’s outburst of ‘I'm not black, I’m not white, I’m just Philip’ echoes the words of O.J. – to white characters who constantly cried, asking with snot-filled noses, ‘Did I do something wrong?’ or simply, from their place of white supremacy, ‘refused to dignify’ their partner’s feelings. The supposedly safe characters – the therapists Teá and Patricia (played by Chalia La Tour and Irene Sofia Lucio, respectively) – were caricatures who perpetuated the issues they sought to circumvent, parroting lines like ‘Let's use that aggression.’

Let’s talk about Black Women in the play. The narrative gives significant weight to exploring Jim and Kaneshia’s relationship. Jim evolves from being the most real character, who calls out the study and arguably the whole play as ‘insane. I feel like I've stepped into a madhouse,’ to becoming the epitome of the white man throughout history, where Kaneshia calls him a ‘virus. Your mere presence was psychological warfare.’ It’s a strong political stance that Harris chooses to have come from a black woman’s mouth. Harris also writes that "Slave Play" exists not ‘to provoke but to ask questions.’ Hmm. The final scene suggests something so provoking, troubling, and absurd that I fear this play may isolate black audiences altogether – which suggests a different motivation for the black-out night.

It isn’t possible to enjoy "Slave Play" entirely. There are moments that reduce the audience to masochistic voyeurs. Clint Ramos’s mirrored set facilitates this by making the audience complicit in brutal displays of sexual violence. During the show's most graphic moments, there is no room to suspend disbelief that what you are watching is not real. However, the mirrored set also serves as a constant reminder that you are watching a ‘play’ where Harris wants us to consider both forms of the word.

Irene Sofia Lucio (Patricia), Fisayo Akinade (Gary), Chalia La Tour (Teá), James Cusati-Moyer (Dustin) in Slave Play  at Noël Coward Theatre. Photo Helen Murray

Although troubling, uneasy, and downright disturbing at times, isn’t this the very essence of what great theatre is and has the power to do? To throw it all up in the air. The deranged lucidity of Harris’s writing, the energy charged into the intimate scenes, the rawness of the acting, Lindsay Jones’s masterful sound composition. The reinvention and invention of history. I will never be able to listen to Rihanna’s banger ‘Work’ in the same way.

This show did its thing. I urge you to watch it, but please take care of yourself afterward.

🌕🌕🌕🌕 4/5 Moons