It ignites conversation, and it’s easy to spoil. These two qualities buttress the narrative surrounding American playwright Jeremy O. Harris’ Slave Play, which advanced from a 2018 off-Broadway premiere to a pre-pandemic Broadway run that was nominated for a record-breaking 12 Tony Awards but won zero.
To mark the Canadian premiere of this influential satire about race, trauma, relationships, and more, Intermission is honouring the play’s divisive reputation by presenting a pair of reviews written independently of one another. Both offer positive evaluations of Canadian Stage’s new production, directed at the Berkeley Street Theatre by Jordan Laffrenier, while diverging in their analytical approach and points of reference. And — fair warning — both discuss the plot head-on, unlocking the sly double meaning resting beneath the play’s seemingly prosaic title.
A TENDER KINK
by Divine Angubua
Fantasy is a realm of endless possibilities. But because nothing is real in this game, no shape or substance is too big, ugly, or taboo for the fantasy vessel to hold. In the three-act Slave Play, Harris tests this theory among three interracial couples in which Black partners no longer feel sexually satisfied by their white lovers. Kinkiness is the necessary mode by which these lovers can honestly reckon with violent tensions at the core of their relationships. Yet, just because a sexual fantasy can hold something large and terrible, does that mean it should?
We meet each couple through their sexual roleplay, all set in the Antebellum South. In these fantasies, the Black partner plays the slave and the white partner the master — except for the gay couple where Gary, a Black, power-wielding slave, oversees his partner Dustin, an indentured servant he categorizes as “off-white”.
But why the Antebellum South, the heart of America’s 19th-century cotton economy, with its dependence on enslaved Black labour? Just as Susan Sontag’s 1975 essay “Fascinating Fascism” roots the leathery theatre of BDSM in the aesthetics of 20th-century European fascism, Slave Play locates its cathartic sexual fantasy in the traumatic history of race in America. As established in a group therapy session in the second act (which follows the intermission), these couples must mutually revisit, invert, and exorcise this tension through rituals of violent slave play, which allow for pure, tender intimacy afterward, as kinky sex often does.
Harris’ play further answers this question with anachronisms which both lighten and darken the narrative from a contemporary standpoint. The first act features hilariously timed snippets of Rihanna’s club classic “Work,” an engorged black dildo pointed at a half-naked Black man like a gun, and smartly directed slips from Antebellum cadence into uncannily contemporary American accents. These grant Slave Play currency, discarding the period piece veneer to offer a portrait of the modern interracial condition, in which Black and white people cannot evolve but through the dark history they share.
Drawing on fantasy’s flexibility as a narrative form, Slave Play excels at blurring the distinctions between biography, allegory, metaphor, hyperbole, and social realism. Unique to this situation, Slave Play’s sexual fantasy also re-enacts the profound historical trauma from which each character articulates their identity in the world. Through acts one to three — the slave play, an exhausting therapy session, and a devastating confrontation — Sophia Walker’s Kaneisha brutally expresses her need for her reluctant husband Jim (Gord Rand) to violate her as his slave. As the play’s anchor, we observe this couple invert the master-slave relationship to reckon with their relationship’s contingency to the institution of slavery, this perverted point of origin. To transcend slavery’s sinister traces in their relationship, each couple must subject themselves to its ugly truth.
On opening night, a similar inversion occurred in the audience, which mirrored the play’s thesis. To become intimate with Slave Play’s drama, the audience must laugh at Kaneisha twerking and moaning across the floor as Jim calls her a “Negress.” People laughed at Alana (Amy Rutherford) calling her boyfriend (Sébastien Heins)’s charm “mulatto magic” because — I speculate — they recognized a familiar fetishistic logic there. A most telling moment of the night was Gary (Kwaku Okyere) identifying himself as “Nigger Gary” to Dustin (Justin Eddy), which got the biggest laugh from the audience. The graphic nature of that slur, with Okyere’s dark-skinned, tremendously muscular physicality against Eddy’s slight, shorter, white-passing frame really cracked everybody up! But that’s the thing about cracking a person up. Whether sexually or with laughter, the person splits open, granting the lover or playwright access to their soft insides. Just as violence begets intimacy for the characters, the audience’s enjoyment of this violence begets a unique empathy for their fraught relationships. Harris, Laffrenier, the actors, and even the audience excel here.
Daniel Bennett’s soft, shadowy lighting, Thomas Ryder Payne’s electropop-esque sound design, and Rachel Forbes’ period-inaccurate costuming support this humour in Act One; between the deconstructed Rihanna song, the dominatrix outfit under a hoop skirt, and Calvin Klein underwear under Civil War-era clothing, you cannot not laugh. As the audiences literally and figuratively saw the characters in a new light in Act Two, the play’s satirical punch hinged upon not just the cast and the script, but also Bennett’s steely white lighting, Gillian Gallow’s tickling set design — look out for dashiki print bean bags in a therapeutic sharing circle — and Laffrenier’s delicate direction; every pause, expression, and enunciation broadens the range of interpretations beyond the script.
Yet by Act Three, the play’s action had thoroughly driven its commentary deep into us, just as the act of slave play tenderizes the couples. By the end, no one was laughing. Having become intimate with the drama on stage, some of us gave a standing ovation after the visceral, horrible, and unforgettable ending, while many remained defiantly seated and left the theatre frowning. Any play about interracial relations will naturally prompt a few mixed opinions — pun unintended — and Slave Play works because of its divisiveness, to say nothing of its excellent satire. Good satire must shake up an audience. Like a sweet catharsis after a deeply disgusting act, this will surely shake you up too.
THE DILDO DILEMMA
by Ilana Lucas
One can’t really talk about Slave Play, Harris’ incisive work about epigenetic racial trauma in America and the impact it has on every aspect of mental health, particularly in vulnerable romantic relationships, while ignoring the dildo in the room. It’s a large, black dildo wielded by one of the six characters in a pilot study for “Antebellum Sexual Performance Therapy,” in which three interracial couples try to work out their issues with imbalances in societal power through slavery-themed BDSM scenarios. (That’s the other meaning of “Slave Play,” a specific subset of dominant/submissive relationships.) Say a safeword and the scenario stops; unfortunately, the issues that led to it are deeply rooted in history.
In Canadian Stage’s powerful and exquisitely discomfiting production, Laffrenier showcases Harris’ opening act in all its intentionally dislocating glory, letting audiences simmer in its audacity as we watch each couple play with these dynamics, racial epithets dripping from their panting mouths with varying degrees of ease.
The anachronisms start immediately with Thomas Ryder Payne’s soundtrack of echoing sexual moans and Gillian Gallow’s imposingly monochrome set. Kaneisha (Sophia Walker) cleans an already highly polished, glossy floor, while a small antique mirror reflects the audience so we’re always conscious of our own presence as intruders in the room. Her costume (designed by Rachel Forbes) is from the Antebellum South, but the house she’s scrubbing looks like an exclusive techno club.
And then there’s Rihanna’s “Work,” the strains of which keep worming into Kaneisha’s consciousness unbidden, causing her body to bump and grind seemingly of its own accord.
By the time white Master Jim (Gord Rand) enters to the backdrop of blinding lights like a Weeknd Superbowl halftime show, the heightened but believably awkward scenario is in full swing.
Speaking of swinging, mistress of the house Alana (Amy Rutherford) asks her mixed-race slave Philip (Sébastien Heins) to entertain her on the violin while her husband is away, and then commands him to pluck her strings from under her elaborate green plantation-chic dress. And Dustin (Justin Eddy) endures abuse by overseer Gary (Kwaku Okyere) while hauling bales of cotton, worshipping the Black man’s boot until he reaches completion.
Played with the self-consciousness of amateurs drawing from half-remembered history lessons and porn films, the scenes would almost be charming if they weren’t so intentionally shocking, but the actors adeptly mine both laughs and gasps from the incongruity.
Amazingly, the vicarious embarrassment is even more excruciating in the second act, and that’s a good thing. Here, the participants debrief their experience, laying each other barer with discourse than during intercourse, as two painfully considerate academics (Beck Lloyd and Rebecca Appplebaum, speaking in hushed and measured tones) desperately facilitate the time to process. It’s here that we see dynamics likely more familiar to our modern lives than slavery BDSM, as the white characters rush to speak first to centre their reactions and discomforts; Gord Rand’s majestically petulant Jim is disgusted with the whole enterprise, Alana just found it hot, and Dustin hates being lumped in with the white oppressors but refuses to speak to his specific racial experience. On the other hand, their partners’ reflections on the exercise cut deep, making them question their identities within and outside the relationships.
Harris perfectly captures the paralysis that politically correct therapy-speak induces. Here, a carefully curated and policed vocabulary starkly contrasts the unfettered first act, but both kinds of speech become equally charged. Rutherford and Heins shine as comic relief, the former fluttering around as a hyper Karen, and the latter furrowing his brow as though having a thought is a physical exercise. Meanwhile, Okyere might break your heart as he begs to be seen, and Walker’s Kaneisha is astonishing, a picture of stoicism until suddenly the boil lances and the infection pours out.
Slave Play’s metaphor of whiteness as a virus may feel familiar to anyone who watched Wights at Crow’s Theatre earlier this year. Yet while Liz Appel’s later work clearly takes sides by manifesting the virus in the real world, Harris’ play roots the description in his characters’ subjective experiences, leading to a more nuanced presentation of the theme. The roleplays’ anachronisms echo the recent Soulpepper/Crow’s/Howland production of The Welkin, but have a practical rather than mystical explanation. And its third-act shocker, when the talking finally stops, speaks as loudly as anything on stage so far this year.
Toronto theatres have recently programmed several American scripts — such as The Thanksgiving Play, Fat Ham, and Topdog/Underdog — that deal with uniquely American aspects of racial tension that are reflected in but not completely duplicated by the Canadian experience. These shows often feel like travelling foreign exhibitions, suffering from a level of reserve that mediates the experience. Laffrenier, however, turns up the experience to 11, giving Slave Play the piercing production it deserves.
But then, it’s hard not to pay attention when there’s a dildo in the room.
Slave Play runs at the Berkeley Street Theatre until October 26. Tickets are available here.
Intermission reviews are independent and unrelated to Intermission’s partnered content. Learn more about Intermission’s partnership model here.
WRITTEN BY
Divine Angubua
Jonathan Divine Angubua is a freelance arts and culture critic living in Toronto. Divine holds a Bachelor of Arts degree with concentrations in Political Science, History, and Creative Writing from the University of Toronto. He enjoys any interesting art and is always looking for great book recommendations. As a writer and lover of theatre, he is most inspired by the strangest things.
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WRITTEN BY
Ilana Lucas
Ilana Lucas is a professor of English in Centennial College’s School of Advancement. She is the President of the Canadian Theatre Critics Association. She holds a BA in English and Theatre from Princeton University, an MFA in Dramaturgy and Script Development from Columbia University, and serves as Princeton’s Alumni Schools Committee Chair for Western Ontario. She has written for Brit+Co, Mooney on Theatre, and BroadwayWorld Toronto. Her most recent play, Let’s Talk, won the 2019 Toronto Fringe Festival’s 24-Hour Playwriting Contest. She has a deep and abiding love of musical theatre, and considers her year working for the estate of Tony winners Phyllis Newman and Adolph Green one of her most treasured memories.
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