Slave Play: Can Love Overcome the Legacy of Slavery? SPOILERS; Little Women

Dustin and Gary in Slave Play, photo @ Matthew Murphy

There are only five days left to see Jeremy O. Harris's remarkable Slave Play. If you are anywhere in the NY metropolitan vicinity and have a free evening, drop all your plans. You might not "like" this play. It might make you mad, uncomfortable, confused, sometimes all at the same time. But you will not forget Slave Play. This is a once-in-a-lifetime theatrical experience. Note: I originally had tickets to see this in October, but an ankle injury left me housebound for much of that month. I'm so grateful I got to see this before it closed.
WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD

The plantation set by Clint Ramos

Some background: I'm an Asian woman, and most of my relationships have been with, well, white men. And I'll just be upfront and say that I, unlike the mixed-race couples in Slave Play, don't have sexual anhedonia. The central tenet of the play is that the legacy of slavery is so insidious and destructive that it affects bedroom interactions "like a virus" to the point where relationships break down completely. This hasn't been my experience. But I'm fully aware that my experiences are not everyone's experiences, and that's why I went to see Slave Play.

The set design (by Clint Ramos) immediately gets the audience thinking. The stage is set up like a mirror, with a plantation projection in the background. The message seems obvious: when you look at these characters, also look within yourselves. Lights up, and three mixed-race couples enact what can only be called antebellum kink. These antebellum kink sketches remind the audience of the shameful sexual power slaveowners held over their slaves. The kink gets hotter and hotter, until one participant screams "Starbucks!"

That's apparently the safe word, and we find out that these three couples are actually in “Antebelkum Sexual Performance Therapy” to cure their bedroom woes. In each case, the black partner has been unable to orgasm with his or her white lover for quite some time. The leaders of this therapy group are a mixed-race lesbian couple, Tea and Patricia (played by Chalia La Tour and Irene Sofia Lucio). These therapists use the kind of annoying, reductive psychobabble lingo like "processing,” “unpacking,” and "speaking from a place of aggression" in such an aggravating way that one realizes that they too are enacting a toxic mixed-race relationship dynamic.

Nolan and Kalukango, photo @ Sara Krulwich

We get to know the three couples: a gay duo of Dustin (James Cusant-Moyer) and Gary (Ato Blankson-Wood), where Dustin insists that he's "not white" because he's invested so much in this relationship with Gary (who is black). There's a May-December couple of Alana (Anne McNamara) and the hunky Philip (Sullivan Jones). Alana nervously scribbles notes throughout the session like a college student in a lecture hall. And finally, there's Jim, a well-mannered British man (Paul Alexander Nolan) and his sullen, OCD wife Kaneisha (Joaquina Kalukango). Kaneisha says very little, but face spills over with hatred and resentment. When she finally explodes that Jim is like a "virus" to her the effect is shocking. The therapy becomes a “space to explore how racial baggage in the US has poisoned these relationships. I won't say more about these three couples except to say that Jeremy O. Harris has them represent slaveowners and slaves without ever taking away their individual voices. If the goal of a playwright is ultimately to make one care about the characters onstage, then Harris certainly succeeded. I went home still thinking about these three couples and wondering if they'd ever reconcile their sexual and personal differences.

McNamara and Jones, photo @ Matthew Murphy

The actors are uniformly excellent and throw themselves so intensely into their roles that one wonders how they do this 8 times a week. The direction by Robert O'Hara is razor-sharp -- this is a long play that didn't feel long. Slave Play is not perfect. The therapists' lingo was annoying funny at first but finally just became annoying. The second act went on for too long especially when the gut-wrenching third act (which I won't give away) packed such a punch and in many ways seemed to say that all the therapy of the second act didn't change the fate of the couples at all.

The final act left everyone in the theater shocked, stunned, shook, talking on the way out, trying to absorb what we'd just seen. My brain was in overdrive. I went home thinking about Slave Play, I will go to bed thinking about Slave Play, and will wake up still thinking about Slave Play. Slave Play is funny, thought-provoking, incendiary. Slave Play is everything theater can be but so rarely is. It will be a crime if this does not win a Tony for Best Play.

Now for those who have seen the play you can comment below: do you think Kaneisha ‘wanted it”? People in the theater around me all said yes and I lean towards yes, but other people I talked to said no.

In other news, I saw the newest adaptation of Little Women. Greta Gerwig's version despite some faults (Florence Pugh is an amazing older Amy, but is NOT believable as a 12-year-old as she has a super-deep, mature voice; Meryl Streep as Aunt March gives one of those performances that is full of tics and mannerisms; the Professor Bhaer storyline is even weaker than it usually is) is a moving version that nicely bookends the 1994 film. Gerwig emphasizes the feminist elements of the story without diluting the cozy March household scenes. It's a crying shame Gerwig was not nominated for an Academy Award for Best Direction

Gerwig's direction cuts back and forth between present and past, as Jo March tries to publish her novel. The flashback structure allows us to see how childhood joys turn into some harsher adult realities. The flashbacks between Beth's first illness and final illness was masterfully done. Soairse Ronan is simply radiant as Jo. She's strong, she's funny, she's vulnerable, and she plays the bittersweet reaction to Laurie (Timothée Chalamet) so beautifully that I sobbed big fat tears. It's possible to be happy for your childhood friend AND heartbroken at the same time, and Ronan balances those two reactions perfectly.

Alcott's story is as heartwarming as ever. I loved the interactions between the sisters -- their moments of love and their fights. I loved the almost-romance between Jo and Laurie. This is a movie that stays with you.

I kept thinking of this song when I think of Jo and Laurie: