A play that had been causing a commotion in New York just before Covid caused a different kind, I'd been looking forward to Jeremy O. Harris'
Slave Play, whose reputation for courting controversy with audacity preceded it. I don't know that it had done so to a wide enough audience to merit opening directly in the West End, but a bit of celebrity casting - and ensuring everyone knew the celebrity in question would be getting his parts out - must have made that seem like less of a gamble. While I try to avoid details about shows I haven't seen, I think the basic premise is pretty well known now - the fact that all the production photos come from the second act suggests the producers have given up on what's really going on in the first being a secret: We open on an antebellum plantation with slave Kaneisha (Olivia Washington) being brutalised by overseer Jim (Kit Harington.)
