Theatre review: Slave Play

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.)

Theatre review: "Daddy" A Melodrama

It's hard enough trying to keep up with everything going on in London theatre without adding Broadway to the mix, but even so I can't help but know that Slave Play was causing a stir in New York before Covid. So far I haven't heard any suggestion of it making the transatlantic trip but Jeremy O. Harris' earlier play "Daddy" A Melodrama has, after a lockdown delay of its own, now landed at the Almeida complete with its original creative team. Franklin (Terique Jarrett) is a young, gay black artist who moved to California a couple of years ago to pursue his career. His collections of doll versions of himself are slowly building a following, and while he's not quite got to the stage of making big money from his creations yet, he's got an enthusiastic supporter in gallerist Alessia (Jenny Rainsford,) who's about to host his first high-profile exhibition. A few weeks before it opens, he meets wealthy, white, fifty-something Andre (Claes Bang.)