Oh, did I ever underestimate the gale force that is Jeremy O. Harris’s “Slave Play,” his barn-burning racial satire now running at Canadian Stage’s Berkeley Street Theatre.
When the show debuted off-Broadway in 2018, the headlines out of New York seemed too outrageous to be true. Some audiences hailed the play as one of the great works of the 21st century. Others staged walkouts. A petition calling for the production to be shut down received more than 6,000 signatures.
On Broadway the following year, the reception was no less polarizing. When awards season rolled around, Tony nominators feted the show with 12 nominations, the most for any play at the time. Voters, however, completely rejected Harris’s play, letting it walk away empty-handed at the 2021 Tonys.
At the time, I thought there was no way “Slave Play” could be as controversial as the initial reviews had claimed. But as I watched the opening performance of its Canadian premiere on Wednesday night, directed with blazing exactness by Jordan Laffrenier, I quickly realized that I couldn’t have been more wrong. “Slave Play” is everything it was made out to be — and somehow even more.
To experience Harris’s satire is to be picked apart from the inside out, and punched by an army of emotions. It’s a work that’s subversive, maddening, riveting and confounding — often all at the same time. More importantly, it challenged me to look inward, and out, in ways few other plays ever have.
It’s structured like a maze of dark, winding underground chambers. And just when you think you’ve figured out your surroundings, uncovering each nook and cranny of this room, the floor beneath your feet starts to collapse, and you find yourself in yet another chamber, this one even darker and more perverse than what’s come before.
I’m hesitant to provide a complete and honest summary of “Slave Play.” To do so would spoil the experience of tumbling through Harris’s carefully constructed creation, told over three acts and two hours, with one intermission. But I shall offer a glimpse inside its first chamber.
It opens with the sound of heavy, rhythmic breathing. We’re on the MacGregor Plantation, just south of Richmond, Virginia. The year is undefined.
There, we’re introduced to three interracial couples. First, we meet a Black slave named Kaneisha (Sophia Walker) and her white overseer, Jim (Gord Rand). Then, we cut to Alana (Amy Rutherford), the plantation’s mistress, and a violin-playing, biracial slave named Phillip (Sébastien Heins). And finally, down in the stables, we encounter an “off-white” indentured servant, Dustin (Justin Eddy), and his Black overseer Gary (Kwaku Okyere).
But something is amiss with this picture, saturated with anachronisms. Rihanna’s hit single “Work” plays in the background; Dustin and Gary occasionally break into modern jargon; Alana pulls out a big, black dildo and wields it like a pistol.
“Slave Play” is both a title and a content description. Which brings me to an obligatory advisory … There’s simulated sex (lots of it), along with full-frontal nudity and too many N-words to count. If this all elicits discomfort, that is Harris’s intention. His play throws its audience from one discomfort into another, with his broad comedy only serving to augment that pervasive feeling.
But what makes “Slave Play” so astounding is that it’s about much more than sex and bedroom taboos. With chameleonic stealth, Harris’s play shifts so seamlessly about halfway through, from a sexual satire into a treatise about race, and the dirty rot that is America’s original sin.
Harris asks: Do we actually see others? Or are we choosing to see through them? When we fail to acknowledge someone’s race, are we doing so to make them feel comfortable? Or to relieve a burden on ourselves?
Systematically, “Slave Play” takes aim at the I-don’t-see-colour brand of “progressivism” that has pervaded our society. Race, though a social construct, is still a formative part of who we are, Harris seems to argue. Thus, to brush aside someone’s race is to deny a part of them.
That “Slave Play” resonates so well on this side of the border, and seven years after its premiere, is thanks to both Harris’s writing and Laffrenier’s production (with a cast rounded out by Rebecca Applebaum and Beck Lloyd). Though penned in the midst of the Black Lives Matter movement, Harris never makes any references to it, lending the play a timeless, universal weight.
Meanwhile, Laffrenier offers up a sharp, supercharged production that feels as if the American playwright wrote this play only yesterday. Among its highlights is Gillian Gallow’s sleek set, with sliding doors and a convex mirror, reflecting the audiences’ gaze back at them. Another standout: the ever-impressive Walker, who delivers a tremendous performance, wound up in hurt, pain and unfulfilled desire.
Her performance isn’t easy to digest. Neither is “Slave Play” as a whole, for that matter. Perhaps you may find yourself wanting to look away, to shield yourself. But Harris, with a firm, guiding hand, beckons you to stay, fix your eyes straight ahead, and acknowledge what is there.
