Posted in: Current News, Pop Culture | Tagged: kit harington, london, Noel Coward Theatre, Slave Play, west end

Slave Play Opens In London, Everyone Asks About Kit Harington's Winkie

Slave Play opened in London's West End last night, but everyone just wants to ask me about Kit Harington's winkie.

I went to the opening night of Slave Play last night, the London West End debut of Jeremy O.Harris' play, with a number of members of the US cast but now also starring Kit Harington alongside an ensemble cast of Fisayo Akinade, James Cusati-Moyer, Aaron Heffernan, Chalia La Tour, Annie McNamara, Irene Sofia Lucio and Olivia Washington. Set on a plain stage, with a mirrored back, reflecting the audience back at itself. Do you see yourselves?

A challenging play about mixed-race relationships in modern-day New York and the historical baggage they bring, it swings in tone to a greater degree than anything I've seen on stage, from farcical caricature, through to slice-of-life whimsy to the harshest and darkest of desires expressed in both upsetting, yet affirming fashion. I was appropriately up on high, in the gods, and that subtext did not escape me, but came out a massive mixture of emotions, shaking, sweating, upset but also somehow related, Slave Play did what the greatest theatre does, it rips emotion out of the body and leaves it flapping on the floor, and everyone, no matter their background, will find something or someone that they can relate to, positively or negatively. I was expecting something grim and worthy; I didn't expect to laugh so much or be so personally challenged about something I didn't believe I had a stake in. Slave Play has been challenged as being a problematic piece of theatre, and it is that, even as a white fifty-something straight Englishman, I was troubled a lot, and of course, that is partly the point. But it's the most affected I've been by a play since Leopoldstadt. You may come out feeling angry. But you will come out… feeling.

What I also definitely didn't expect was to receive so many direct messages asking about the state of Kit Harington's penis. I guess this is a thing. Kit plays Jim, an Englishman in New York, who initially comes over like a Marcus Brigstocke type in a relationship with an African-American whose attitudes towards him have changed, and he finds great trouble on the demands made of him to act in the fashion of an 18th-century slave owner, a history and experience he has very little knowledge of or relationship to. Even in fantasy, the character equivocates his character to something else… until he no longer does. And Kit is horrifically convincing in that transformation, including when he stands naked on the stage, and reality and fantasy start to rip each other apart. His opposite, Kaneisha, played by Olivia Washington, is also a stand out in this, going through the greatest transformation in tone, and her stage presence in partnership forms the entire third act that most hits home. We are left thinking… but not knowing what to think.

Entering the theatre, patrons are asked to affix a sticker to their phone's back camera. The last time I was in a theatre with any such phone policy, it was to see Good starring David Tennant, the idea was that they didn't want any photos of Tennant in an SS uniform making the tabloid pages. I wondered what the concern was this time, and it was definitely Kit Harington. It also shows a lack of imagination, I guess, that stickers could be peeled off. Or that people could use front cameras. Or their iPads.

Maybe it's more psychological pressure. But given the thirsty, demanding DMs I woke up to today, I don't think that will stop people. I paid £13 for my ticket up in the gods, the woman next to me paid £20, and Slave Play releases 30 tickets every Wednesday at 10am, for every day that week, for £1 or whatever you can pay. It runs until the 21st of September at the Noel Coward Theatre on St Martin's Lane, cheek by jowl to Tom Holland's Romeo And Juliet.

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