Jeremy O. Harris' Slave Play is crossing the pond for a U.K. premiere, with performances set to begin June 29 at the Noël Coward Theatre. The limited run will continue through September 21, with Robert O'Hara again directing after staging the play's 2018 world premiere Off-Broadway at New York Theatre Workshop, along with the 2019 Broadway premiere and 2021 Broadway encore run.
The cast will be led by Game of Thrones' Kit Harington and Olivia Washington, both new to the production, alongside Fisayo Akinade and Aaron Heffernan.
The London cast will also include actors from the 2018 Off-Broadway and 2019 Broadway productions, including James Cusati-Moyer as Dustin, Chalia La Tour as Teá, Annie McNamara as Alana, and Irene Sofia Lucio as Patricia. McNamra, La Tour, and Cusati-Moyer all received 2020 Tony nominations for their performances. Casting is by Amy Ball, with original U.S. casting by Taylor Williams.
The work is set at the MacGregor Plantation in the Antebellum Old South, but nothing is as it seems. The Broadway bow became the most Tony-nominated play in Tony Awards history, receiving 12 nods, though winning none.
"This play has been a part of me for many years now," says Harris in a statement. "It was a play written for my friends, actors like myself, who felt underserved by the options available to them to explore the unspoken terrain of both American history and our collective unconscious in relation to those histories. It was a play written for my friends in grad school who were rarely given the chance to be center stage. It was written thinking that the Iseman stage (my university’s black box theatre) would be its first and final home. Yet five years later, we have been Off-Broadway, on Broadway, and all over America. And now London. Many of the people from the very first reading in my grad school flat have been with the play ever since and are returning to do it in London. It is one of the great honors and gifts of my life that it has made it here.
"I do not take it lightly that this play is one of the rare plays by a Black author that has made its way to the West End. I’m incredibly grateful for the trails blazed by the myriad Black British writers recently who have broken ground for Black writers and audiences on the West End like Arinzé Kene, Kwame Kwei-Armah, Tyrell Williams, Ryan Calais Cameron, and Natasha Gordon. I hope that with this production even more work by writers of color will find support on our largest commercial stages."
As during the Broadway run, Black Out nights will be held, offering Black audience members a special opportunity to see the show with an all-Black audience. Black Out performances are planned for July 17 and September 17.
The production is also offering low-cost seats through two programs: 30 tickets for each performance will be made available on a pay-what-you-can program, with tickets becoming available each Wednesday the week before the performance, beginning June 26. Those tickets will be available for as low as £1. An additional 10 tickets will be released on each performance day for £20 each, with a maximum of two per person in both cases.
The entire original creative team will return alongside O'Hara, including scenic designer Clint Ramos, costume designer Dede Ayite, lighting designer Jiyoun Chang, and composer and sound designer Lindsay Jones.
The London premiere is being produced by Empire Street Productions, Seaview Productions, and bb2. Visit SlavePlayLondon.com for more.
