When Kit Harington last appeared on the London stage, he was sharpening his Shakespearean credentials as the titular monarch in Max Webster’s Henry V at the Donmar Warehouse in 2022. Two years later, the 37-year-old actor has returned to the West End in an entirely different register: Jeremy O. Harris’s Slave Play, a confrontational, sexually explicit, and tonally audacious examination of race, sexuality, and the lingering psychological aftershocks of American slavery. The production opened at the intimate Noël Coward Theatre on 29 June 2024 for a strictly limited run through 21 September, marking the UK premiere of what became the most Tony Award-nominated play in history.
From Game of Thrones to the MacGregor Plantation
Harington’s casting as Jim – a buttoned-up white British man navigating an interracial relationship – generated immediate public interest. Best known for portraying Jon Snow across eight seasons of HBO’s Game of Thrones (2011–2019), a role that delivered him two Primetime Emmy nominations and a Golden Globe nod, Harington has consistently resisted the assumption that television fame equates to stage credibility. His theatre credits stretch back to his 2009 professional debut in War Horse at the National Theatre, followed by appearances in Posh at the Royal Court, Doctor Faustus at the Duke of York’s in 2016, and True West opposite Johnny Flynn at the Vaudeville in 2018–2019. A fuller assessment of his stage work can be found in our Kit Harington stage career retrospective.
What distinguishes Slave Play is its thematic extremity. Harris’s three-act drama, which premiered off-Broadway at the New York Theatre Workshop in November 2018 under Robert O’Hara’s direction, follows three interracial couples who undergo “Antebellum Sexual Performance Therapy.” The Black partners have developed anhedonia – an inability to feel sexual pleasure with their white partners – and the treatment involves re-enacting plantation-era power dynamics through BDSM-influenced role-play. The title operates as a double entendre, referring simultaneously to the history of American slavery and to sexual “slave play” as a BDSM practice.
The Broadway Record-Breaker
The play’s journey from Yale School of Drama – where Harris wrote it during his first year of the MFA programme – to Broadway’s John Golden Theatre represents one of the most rapid ascents in recent American theatre history. After its off-Broadway run generated both fervent praise and a petition demanding its closure, Slave Play transferred to Broadway in October 2019. It ran for 121 performances, closing on 19 January 2020, and at the 74th Tony Awards in 2021 it received a record-breaking 12 nominations – surpassing the 11 earned by the 2018 revival of Tony Kushner’s Angels in America – though it ultimately won zero trophies. The nominations spanned Best Play, Best Direction for Robert O’Hara, Best Leading Actress for Joaquina Kalukango, two Featured Actor slots for Ato Blankson-Wood and James Cusati-Moyer, two Featured Actress citations for Chalia La Tour and Annie McNamara, and technical recognitions for scenic design, costume design, lighting, sound, and original score.
The London transfer retains several original Broadway cast members – Cusati-Moyer, La Tour, McNamara, and Irene Sofia Lucio all reprise their roles – alongside Harington and new additions Olivia Washington (daughter of Denzel Washington) as Kaneisha, Fisayo Akinade as Gary, and Aaron Heffernan as Phillip. O’Hara returns to direct, with Clint Ramos’s mirrored set forcing the audience to see their own faces reflected back during the play’s most confrontational moments.
“Is London Ready?”
The production’s marketing tagline proved prescient when it triggered a political intervention. In the lead-up to the London opening, Rishi Sunak publicly criticised the planned “Black Out” nights – dedicated performances for Black-identifying audience members. Sunak, erroneously characterising the Noël Coward Theatre as publicly funded (it is a commercial Delfont Mackintosh venue), called the concept “wrong and divisive.” Harris responded by noting that Black Out performances had previously been held in London for Tambo and Bones and Daddy, and that no audience member was turned away due to race.
The production sold out its entire run, with tickets for the 220-seat Noël Coward Theatre commanding premium prices. Accessibility measures included 30 pay-what-you-can tickets at £1 each per performance, released weekly, plus 10 additional tickets at £20 on performance days.
Critical Reception: Divided but Engaged
British critics arrived with six years of accumulated hype and knowledge that Slave Play had generated walkouts and petitions in New York. The consensus settled at approximately 3.4 stars out of 5 – respectable for a deliberately divisive work, but cooler than the rapturous New York notices.
Sarah Hemming in the Financial Times described a “rollercoaster of emotions” within a “blistering, painful and provocative drama.” The Guardian‘s Arifa Akbar called it “too clever for its own good” but conceded it is “charismatic, needling theatre. An event.” Dominic Cavendish in The Telegraph noted that while the third act achieved genuine dramatic force, the second act’s reliance on therapy-speak occasionally tested patience. Andrzej Lukowski at Time Out singled out the play’s final scene – featuring only Washington’s Kaneisha and Harington’s Jim – as “intimate, tender, brave, repellant and gut wrenching.”
For Harington, the role represents a deliberate career gamble. His decision to spend the final scene nude – a moment that drew specific mention from multiple reviewers – signals an actor uninterested in trading on nostalgia for Jon Snow and willing to commit physically to material that demands vulnerability.
The London production of Slave Play runs at the Noël Coward Theatre through 21 September 2024. It is produced by Empire Street Productions, Seaview Productions, and bb2. For more on the play’s Broadway history and the record-breaking Tony nominations, see our Slave Play Broadway analysis.
