Reviews of Play Desperate Pleasures at the York Theatre Nyc
critic's selection
Review: 'Slave Play,' Four Times as Big and Just as Searing
Jeremy O. Harris's Off Broadway hitting near race and sex in America shakes things upwards on Broadway.
- Slave Play
- NYT Critic'southward Pick
- Broadway, Drama , Play
- 2 hrs.
- Closing Date:
- John Gilt Theater, 252 W. 45th St.
- 212-239-6200
Though it'due south mild, paradoxical and perhaps a scrap prurient to say so, "Slave Play" is a happy surprise.
It's balmy because Jeremy O. Harris'south play, which opened at the Aureate Theater on Sunday, is one of the best and most provocative new works to show upwards on Broadway in years.
It'southward a paradox because what could be happy in a play most hurting? A play then serious, so furious and so deeply engaged in the almost intractable conflicts of American life that it became both a cause célèbre and a scandal before it opened?
And information technology's a bit prurient because when we talk about the provocations of "Slave Play" — and the people who saw information technology downtown last yr at New York Theater Workshop have been talking about it almost nonstop since — what we ordinarily mean is sex activity: the whip, the dildo, the nudity, the boots, the chains, the orgasms both achieved and aborted. Those things are indeed a surprise, at least if y'all haven't watched television this millennium.
Merely sexual practice is more than titillation in "Slave Play"; it is the crucible in which Mr. Harris performs a thought experiment. If blackness people in intimate partnerships with white people felt rubber to say how they needed to exist seen, would their white partners be able and willing to comply? Or are black people forever condemned past the legacy of slavery to live "squarely in the blind spot" of their nonblack partners' "myopia?"
Though the experiment is carried out in a complex format — one that blurs satire and minstrelsy and comedy and drama — this is non some avant-garde nonsense producing microscopic results. In focusing on iii messed-upward interracial partnerships, "Slave Play" has nothing less than the messed-up interracial partnership of our whole land in its sights.
If only our whole land could go on a weeklong retreat to explore these issues, every bit the three couples do. (Read on judiciously if you lot want to preserve the play's surprises.) Their retreat, at a quondam plantation outside Richmond, Va., has been designed to help the black partners "process" their anhedonia — their inability to get pleasure from their white partners — through a series of exercises including, on Day iv, role play as slaves.
In that role play, Kaneisha (Joaquina Kalukango) takes on the persona of a "disgusting picayune bed wench" to "Massa Jim" — that is, her husband (Paul Alexander Nolan), putting on a Southern accent. Phillip (Sullivan Jones) portrays a cultured business firm slave who agrees to be dominated by his partner, Alana (Annie McNamara), playing the plantation'due south neurotic mistress. Gary (Ato Blankson-Wood) casts himself as a field slave in accuse of a white indentured servant played by his narcissistic swain, Dustin (James Cusati-Moyer).
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In the play's first section, called "Piece of work," these three couples effort to reconnect sexually in their antebellum alter egos (and in Dede Ayite'southward witty costumes) while Mr. Harris and the play'due south director, Robert O'Hara, press every outrageous button they can. (It's just the beginning when Kaneisha twerks to Rihanna, begging Massa Jim to telephone call her a "Negress.") For some audience members — not to mention social media kibitzers — just seeing black characters take on reviled stereotypes may exist besides much to bear.
But the play'southward appetite is built on this outrageous foundation. In the second function, called "Process," the couples discuss the outcomes of their role play under the guidance of two psychologists — Teá (Chalia La Tour) and Patricia (Irene Sofia Lucio) — who developed the therapy. Here, Mr. Harris's satire of academic gassiness and self-help psychobabble does double duty: Information technology'south hilarious (even if a bit overdrawn) and yet illuminating. As the couples begin to pry always more deeply into their troubles, we are the beneficiaries of their painful insights.
What we larn in lockstep with them is that the black subjects — Kaneisha, Phillip and Gary — are prized past their lovers despite their blackness instead of because of information technology. The role play, designed to flip that polarity, has forced the white partners to await at color and see it deeply, even at the risk of mortification.
This dynamic is pushed to a thrilling conclusion in the play'due south third department, called "Bewitch," in which one couple faces the fallout of their work. A brilliant niggling play in itself, "Exorcise" is as wrenching a portrait of moral gridlock every bit anything in Arthur Miller, as weirdly lyrical equally Tennessee Williams and as potently heightened as Suzan-Lori Parks.
Prototype
I wish I could run across what Mr. O'Hara, who frequently directs his own coruscating plays, could exercise with those authors. (His staging of "A Raisin in the Lord's day" at the Williamstown Theater Festival this summer was revelatory.) His showmanship both leavens and deepens difficult fabric and was crucial in turning "Slave Play" into the event it was downtown.
Uptown, his staging has grown broader and funnier only no less trenchant in the 800-seat Gold than it was in a space one-quarter the size; the continuous embroidering of marvelous detail fills whatever gaps that might have opened in the expansion. (Lookout Phillip have refuge nether his hoodie when he gets overwhelmed, or Alana scramble afterward her notebook as if it might protect her from what she'south learning.) The returning bandage — especially Mr. Cusati-Moyer as the boyfriend who pathetically insists he is not as white as he looks — has likewise amped up the emotional book; they accept a bigger business firm to bring down.
Their performances make that of the only new cast member — Ms. Kalukango — even more distinct and grave by comparing. As Kaneisha becomes the center of the play's statement, you see her struggle to express herself playing out on her face before she has the words. When the words do come, they are all the more devastating.
Devastating and, for white people, or at whatsoever rate for me, painful. And why shouldn't they be? The best plays aren't just almost empathizing with the oppressed; they're also about accepting our connectedness to the oppressors. With incommensurateness just also love, "Slave Play" lets us all see ourselves in the muddle that is race in America now. There's even a behemothic mirrored wall in Clint Ramos's ready to brand sure we exercise.
Such reflections are no longer mutual on Broadway. If "Slave Play" can bring them to a bigger audition — fifty-fifty an audience that is shocked or offended — information technology will be a happy surprise indeed. Stupor and offense may be just the ticket now.
Slave Play
Tickets Through January. 5, 2020, at the Golden Theater, Manhattan; 212-947-8844, slaveplaybroadway.com. Running time: 2 hours.
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/06/theater/slave-play-review-broadway.html
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