Noël Coward theatre, London
Kit Harington and Olivia Washington star in a charged, often comical drama about the legacy of historical racial violence in three couples’ sexual dynamics
What happens in the bedroom, with all the power play between couples, is vital documentation in literature, said Doris Lessing in defence of Lady Chatterley’s Lover. It might be an old argument but it is an effective one in favour of Jeremy O Harris’s confrontation with race between the sheets.
The overarching idea behind his play is that historical racial violence lives on, somatically, through the generations and reveals itself in sexual dynamics. Its enactment is in its own outre league: rarely has a West End stage seen a giant black dildo employed on a Gone With the Wind-style four-poster bed, along with antebellum master-slave cosplay and a tongue-frenzy of sexualised boot licking.
