By Aline Mahrud

WORTH A LOOK?: *****

WHEN?: Saturday 29 June 2024, running through 21 September 2024 RUNTIME: 120 minutes (no interval)

The Role Play That Goes Wrong might have been a more illuminating title for this new tale about 3 inter-racial couples seeking help.

• Read on for reasons including detail of Harington’s unsympathetic naked performance

Kit Harington’s (True West, Vaudeville Theatre) naked and full-frontal performance as English slave owner Jim will grab the headlines but it was Olivia Washington as his slave partner Kaneisha who gives the most affecting portrayal of the night.

The 12 Tony-nominated Jeremy O. Harris play looks at 3 couples undergoing ‘Antebellum Sexual Performance Therapy’ because the black partners no longer feel sexual attraction to their white partner.

Director Robert O’Hara gives us a mirrored set in which we as an audience can see the reflection of ourselves reminding us we are complicit in what we are about to witness looking out onto the big house of the slave plantation.

Next we see plantation mistress Alana, a very funny and well-meaning Annie McNamara, dominate her younger slave Philip, Aaron Heffernan giving us a mixed-race jock, in the bedroom eventually inserting a lengthy black dildo into him.

Finally, the slave master/slave role play is inverted as gay couple ‘n*****’ Gary, a quite brilliant Fisayo Akinade (The Antipodes, National Theatre) in the most demanding role we’ve ever seen him play, bullies ridiculous actor Dustin, a hilariously self-indulgent James Cusati-Moyer.

We won’t say a great deal more about this thought-provoking and very funny play’s 2nd and 3rd acts other than the reveal pulls the rug right from you and immediately casts new light on what is being seen.

What is author Jeremy O. Harris trying to tell us? Not everything is black and white in interracial relationships and instead the author poses questions rather than answers about identity, power and desire.

There’s also an amusing use of the word ‘Starbucks’, see sticker on the programme above, which we won’t spoil although we will say that the sticker is used to obscure the cameras on audience phones so pictures of the brief and tasteful Harington full-frontal nudity here does not leak.

In many ways it is a red herring designed to get bums on seats which Slave Play doesn’t really need because it is 1 of the best new comedies of the year as likely to make you think as laugh while occasionally feeling very awkward.

• Main picture via Facebook courtesy Slave Play Tickets
• Have you seen Kit Harington show before and what did you think of it? Let us know what you thought in the comments below
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