Witness Jeremy O. Harris’s “Slave Play,” directed by Robert O’Hara, which has now moved to Broadway after a noisily successful 2018 off-Broadway run. To be sure, “Slave Play” comes equipped with a prominently displayed program note warning viewers that “this might hurt.” That’s a sensible precaution in our soft-mouthed age of Cancel Culture, especially seeing as how the off-Broadway production of the play, in which slavery appears to be portrayed onstage in a comic manner, elicited attention-getting trigger-me-not protests from more-woke-than-thou halfwits who didn’t bother to see “Slave Play” before attacking it. The catch is that “Slave Play” makes this unexceptionable point in a way that is—sometimes—funny. Since there’s no way to review “Slave Play” without giving away its “reveal,” be forewarned that the following paragraph contains a spoiler: “Slave Play” opens with three interlocking scenes that seem to show whites having sex with their black slaves. But it comes far too late to redeem the failings of the first two acts of “Slave Play,” which are unsatisfyingly flabby and repetitive.

Source: Wall Street Journal October 07, 2019 21:33 UTC