Slave Play – Noel Coward Theatre

"I can see why it caused a fuss but at the same time can see why it never won any of the 12 Tonys it was nominated for."

As an American who was very underwhelmed when he first saw the show off-Broadway at New York Theatre Workshop, I want to note that it received all of those nominations in the pandemic year when very, very few shows were eligible.

Whereas Stereophonic just broke the record for most Tony nominated play because it was actually enthusiastically received, Slave Play had a lot of detractors at home as well, and notably, it lost in all of its categories, mostly to two wonderful productions (The Inheritance and A Christmas Carol) that arrived from your shores!

“Risk”

Or arrogance

Depending how you looking at it

And have seen many more controversial and unsettling plays

Slave Play is hysterical writing at its worst

The Nether had a WE transfer

Chilling and very disturbing

Just out of the matinee of the biggest losing play in Tony history.

For a play that's meant to be outrageous and subversive, I was a bit bored.

I thought "Daddy" was really excellent, both as a play and as a production.

As a play, the crux was whether the protagonist (Terique Jarrett) loved his sugar Daddy (Claes Bang), or was only in it for the connections to get his art career going. Similarly, did Bang's character relate to the protagonist or did he just enjoy being called "Daddy?"

The degree to which relationships can be transactional vs affectionate vs both is a really interesting theme, and the play really got to grips with that, I thought, with Claes Bang's performance of George Michael's "Father Figure" to the protagonist generating a real frisson, because it teased that everything about their relationship may be role play, or was it that the role play was just a bit of fun they engaged in to heat things up.

Anyway, the level to which the easygoing protagonist may be selling his soul, Faust-like, felt pretty dramatic too.

The production, which put a 'real' swimming pool in the Almeida, and had them swim about and hang out by the pool in the 'sun,' really scored for me in generating that feel of sensuous seductive superficiality that really brought out the themes.

It was a harder hitting play than "Slave Play," for having one main character.

"Slave Play" is NOT outrageous, and is not effective at outraging.

It is best viewed as a pretty funny S&M comedy, generating laughs through interchanging power dynamics, while illuminating difficulties of being in interracial relationships, in the unfortunate instance that race is playing too heavily (or too lightly) in the psychology and preoccupations of one or the other partner. In a way, just like in "Daddy," the worry is "you don't like me for me," and "how corrupted are the relationships" because of that.

The play is quite grown-up because it doesn't answer all the questions it raises, and it suggests that there are in-between states, where even if race is going to be a big thing, even if your psyche or your society won't let you forget it, you can still negotiate relationships anyway.

I definitely wouldn't see this to be outraged. It simply isn't outrageous at all. For those who like a laugh, there are laughs. For those who like complexity, there's food for thought. For those who neither like laughs nor complexity, and want provocation, the play's got nothing. In my opinion lol.

Really enjoyed this last night. I thought the writing, performances and design were all great. Only thing I thought didn't work as well was the amount of sitting down in the therapy scene but apart from that found it to be a thought provoking, well executed play and very different to other things I've seen in the West End recently. Solid 4 stars from me.

Probably better he focuses on shifting tickets

Despite quite good reviews

This is gonna bomb

Particularly dumb programming over the summer holidays as well

Acts 2 & 3 highly repetitive and a high level of waffle, far to long due to the above. In its current format it needs an interval for the simple reason to provide an outlet for those that want to leave. If distilled down to 80 - 90 min straight through, I'd have come away thinking more favourably of a play in the vanguard of American theatre. Certainly, there were things to like in this.

2 Stars

Empire Productions have tweeted a photo of Madonna with the cast, having seen this whilst in London. Wow!

To me, this is a fairly typical New York fringe production. I've no idea what the background to the play is, but I rather picture this as an improvised long therapy scene, then they've bolted on short scenes at the start and the end to make it seem more complete.

It is a very long 2 hours 10 minutes without an interval (presumably because the audience would be a lot smaller if there was an interval). The only person leaving I noticed was someone who said very loudly "I can't stand any more" about 5 minutes before the end, then left with a lot of banging of chairs.

I got a day seat in mid Stalls, so am reasonably satisfied. Despite having the ticket number in my hand, I somehow managed to walk into the row in front, causing some confusion, but the correct seat owner was very polite. On the plus side, my real seat had several seats free at either side, so it was a comfortable watch.

There are some interesting aspects. A group of people in the rear Stalls found the whole thing hilarious. I didn't laugh. The fatal flaw is a really stretched act in the middle, which I guess lasted 90 minutes (without checking my watch), which is allegedly an academic research project, but there is absolutely no academic research project in the world which would get ethical approval to have two supposed qualified researchers and book authors continually adding their opinion, foreshadowing future tasks, and somehow avoiding to keep a single note about their research.

As others have said, watchable, not groundbreaking in the slightest, and in the 2024 context, rather dated. It needs to lose about 30 minutes. I can see why it would receive award nominations in the US, but I can't imagine that any will be forthcoming in the UK.

To give credit to the theatre, the label they put on my phone camera was still present when I got home. That has never happened with Cabaret.

Just reminded me that the full length mirrors were a great way of seeing what was happening at the upper levels. There were certainly some fidgeters and some slumped expressions.

I did feel envious of the ushers as they were able to move around.

A good summation of it.