Zendaya and Tessa Thompson were among the stars who attended the press night of playwright Jeremy O. Harris’ ‘controversial’ show, Slave Play, in London.
According to the report by Daily Mail, the Euphoria star, 27, and the Westworld actress, 40, brought some Hollywood support at the Noel Coward Theatre as the production opened on the West End.
The play arrived on the West End after getting its own HBO doc and glitzy Broadway audiences, which included Rihanna whose song Work is reprised during the play.
However, the production was hit by outrage in its off-Broadway run back in in 2018 when a petition for closure was launched.
The petition was created by a Black woman who branded the play ‘one of the most disrespectful displays of anti-Black sentiment’ she had ever seen.
It gained more than 6,000 signatures and the cast received death threats, while the hashtag #ShutDownSlavePlay was made on Twitter.
Once the play hit Broadway it did not create the same level of outrage, however members of the audience regularly walked out during performances, according to The Independent.
The play did cause a stir when it was revealed that their would be two Black Out nights geared towards black audiences, after producers announced shows ‘free from the white gaze’ in February.
At the time, a spokesperson for then-Prime Minister Rishi Sunak criticised the move and said ‘restricting audiences on the basis of race would be wrong and divisive’.
The Independent reviewer, said: ‘It’s never an easy watch – and its Black Out nights feel like an important gesture to Black audiences who don’t want white discomfort to define their experience of it.’
But with or without the injection of A-list glamour, the play has still received four star reviews, with one critic at The Guardian branding it ‘an event’.
The reviewer challenged anyone to ‘leave the play without needing to argue in favour or against, describe moments, express solidarity or otherwise.’
The 12-time Tony nominated play follows three interracial couples as they work on their relationships through a highly unusual type of sex therapy.
Kaneisha (Olivia Washington) and Jim (Kit Harington) are joined by two other interracial couples: Alana (Annie McNamara) and Phillip (Aaron Heffernan), plus Gary (Fisayo Akinade) and his (it turns out) actor boyfriend Dustin.
The Evening Standard warned future audiences ‘prepare to be shocked’ during the ‘uncomfortable watch’ which uses racist language and ‘pornographic Deep South slavery fantasies’.
The lowest rating came from The Times, who offered the play two stars, and claimed: ‘the satire of Slave Play can all feel a bit five years ago ‘.
However they did note that it may because that is how long it has taken to get to the West End.
Slave Play is a drama first staged in New York about mixed-race relationships that first registered on these shores after stoking controversy that reached all the way to Rishi Sunak in No10 earlier this year.
What got people’s goat about Jeremy O. Harris’s drama was a proposal for two ‘black out nights’ – designed to exclude theatregoers considered to be white, so that black members of the audience could be shielded from any perceived discomfort (although producers assure us that no one will be turned away).
The then-prime minister’s spokesman condemned this move as ‘wrong’ and ‘divisive’, thus ensuring it became the hottest ticket in town. The play opened officially in London’s West End last night, starring Kit Harington from Game of Thrones and Denzel Washington’s daughter Olivia.
Suffice to say, it is a loveless piece of work, from which many people, of all ethnicities, may wish in retrospect that they too had been excluded.
Harington opens proceedings, playing a whip-cracking racist plantation enforcer in 19th-century Virginia who has rough sex on stage with a slave girl (Washington).
This charmless peep show yields to another where, up in the big house, the mistress uses a sex toy on her ‘mulatto’ (mixed-race) boyfriend.
A third scenario sees a young black gay man sexually humiliating a white worker gathering cotton sacks on what appears to be the same plantation.
But then we discover that we’ve been hoodwinked – it was all just role play!
He show turns instead into a couples’ therapy programme, aimed at ‘helping black partners re-engage with white partners’. In this supposedly comic twist, the black characters are told by therapists – a condescending black and white lesbian couple – that they are suffering from ‘racialised inhibiting disorder’.
Ha-ha, you may think. But when that breaks down in recrimination, and Harington (stark naked) employs a whip in the simulated rape of Washington (partially clad), no one’s laughing any more.
The scene is meant to illustrate ‘inherited historical trauma’, whereby the psychological damage sustained by generations of slaves is deemed to be passed down to their descendants.
If you want abusive sex scenes and sermons, Harris is your man. Characters, plot and intellectual nuance are beyond him.
It is, at best, a juvenile provocation suggesting mixed-race partnerships are forms of racially motivated rape. If this were true, everyone involved in such a relationship should be arrested and prosecuted – as they were under apartheid in South Africa
To carry off this calumny, Robert O’Hara’s production resorts to screeching caricature.
He puts the dire into diatribe.
We know little – and learn less – of each of the eight characters (including the babbling shrinks).
Harington’s Jim is a surly Brit who – because he sounds posh and polite – is judged all the more evil for turning out to be a violent, racist misogynist.
His partner Kaneisha, Washington seems fun at first, twerking while she’s working. But she’s secretly harbouring the belief that Jim’s whiteness is actually a deadly, supremacist ‘virus’.
Meanwhile, Fisayo Akinade’s Gary turns on his boyfriend Dustin on the grounds that he doesn’t feel ‘prized’ – a complaint common to failed relationships of all kinds. And, as that unappreciative boyfriend, James Cusati-Moyer is a vain, vacuous thesp.
And the third couple? Well, they’re just a harmless himbobimbo double act.
Despite the comic facade, this is a poisonous piece of work that demands to be taken seriously while it mugs, mocks and dehumanises its characters.
And with a wall of mirrors on stage reflecting the audience (below a Rihanna lyric reading ‘nuh body touch me you nuh righteous’), we are all accused of complicity.
In short, Slave Play makes an excellent case for being shut down – as some black protesters demanded on Broadway.
Early audience reviews from people who saw the first performance have begun appearing on X, with a very divided result.
One person said: ‘After hating Slave Play when I first became aware of it in 2018, I was given a free ticket to watch it on West End last night.
‘I can now say it is categorically the worst play ever written and produced and if you can endorse it you are an enemy of Black people and Black women.
Another mixed review, read: ‘Lots to love about Slave Play, especially in the performances. But it’s a bit too uneven. A more focused version could be really special – as it is, it’s a good (if uncomfortable) watch.’
One other said: ‘Slave Play was gisty. I think it was well executed satire. I laughed a lot more than I was expecting to and I thought the staging was clever.
‘I took it as parodic and enjoyed it on that level. Some scenes of seat writhing discomfort but nothing too gratuitous.’
During the evening, Zendaya and Tessa appeared on familiar terms with their pal Jeremy, 35, as they cuddled up to him for photographs.
Zendaya looked typically chic in a long-sleeved lime green shop, which she styled with a cream skirt and a pair of red boots.
Zendaya had her wavy blonde locks pulled back on the summer night, with some of her light tresses framing her pretty features.
Thor actress Tessa cut an incredibly chic figure in a black mini dress, which styled with a pair of tights and black leather ankle boots.
She opted for soft glam make-up and wore her dark locks slicked onto her head, while finishing the look with a selection of silver jewellery.
Jeremy, who debuted his production five years ago, donned an all-black ensemble of a coat with roomy pants and shoes.
Emmy-winning actress Zendaya was subsequently photographed as she exited the venue while flanked by security and organisers later in the evening.
Zendaya has spent time in London this summer, as she’s supported boyfriend Tom Holland as he performs in a production of Romeo & Juliet at The Duke of York’s Theatre.