The controversial and widely discussed radical and confrontational Slave Play by Jeremy O. Harris is a game changer. With his first Broadway production, the playwright is regarded as one of the brightest, most innovative, and outrageous of his generation. This production is a tsunami of insight, knowledge, rage, and Olympian humor. There are three segments in one two hours-plus act. It is daunting, if not impossible in real time, to unpack all of the ideas and theories that are hurled at us. One can slow down and dissect the text which has been published in American Theater magazine. If you attend the play with no prior knowledge of reviews the first segment is off kilter and shocking. It entails Pre Civil War or antebellum graphic sex between three interracial couples. There is a gay couple and the other two are straight. (We were surprised to learn that the sex is in fact “toned down” from an earlier Off Broadway production.) An abrupt transition brings us to the second scene in which the three couples are “processed” in an experimental therapy session conducted by another couple. The dynamics of the three couples are echoed by that of therapy women who are African American and Latina. The final segment is a follow-up and reprieve of rough sex role playing of the first of three couples. Its trope entails exposition that the white subjects don’t listen to their partners. Responses shock their partners of color by being framed through white supremacy and guilt.
