| SLAVE PLAY Tonight (Possible Spoilers) | |
| Last Edit: sergius 12:41 am EST 12/20/18 | |
| Posted by: sergius 12:38 am EST 12/20/18 | |
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| SLAVE PLAY is mostly academic. Harris privileges intellection over characterization and so the play piles on the theses, most of them related to race-based trauma, without anchoring them in a credible narrative economy. The play is in three parts--all of them too long--but it's not nearly entire. Most of what works best is in the second part which, apart from the regrettable appearance of two cartoon therapists who make for easy, predictable laughs, takes flight because it depicts characters with histories and feelings about those histories. They struggle to know what they've lived and they're recognizable. The first part is so broadly played--the actors are practically winking at the audience--it grows tiresome fast. And all the straining to be provocative just adds to the fatigue. Inexplicably, the final part dispenses with two of the play's three couples to focus on the remaining couple in a sort of traumatic apotheosis that, while beautifully played, is a tangle of themes. In the end, SLAVE PLAY is smart and sometimes exciting but it doesn't cohere. Harris is yet very young. He has a rollicking talent that will likely grow more focused with practice. | |
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