Kit Harington to star in UK premiere of Slave Play

Game Of Thrones star Kit Harington has joined the cast of Slave Play, which will premiere on the West End stage this summer, it has been announced.

The production, playing from June 29 until September 21 at the Noel Coward Theatre in London, will also star Heartstopper’s Fisayo Akinade, Brassic actor Aaron Heffernan and Olivia Washington, the daughter of two-time Oscar winning actor Denzel Washington.

Written by Euphoria producer Jeremy O Harris, the play about race, identity and sexuality in twenty-first century America was originally staged in New York in 2018 before transferring to the Broadway stage a year later.

The play, which had 12 nominations at the 74th Tony Awards, will see James Cusati-Moyer, Chalia La Tour, Annie McNamara and Irene Sofia Lucio reprise their roles, while Robert O’Hara will direct.

It will mark another big West End role for Harington, who made his stage debut in 2008 in the National Theatre’s adaptation of War Horse and in 2022 played the titular role in Henry V at the Donmar Warehouse.

Creator Harris, who has starred in Gossip Girl and Emily In Paris, said: “This play has been a part of me for many years now.

“It was a play written for my friends, actors like myself, who felt under-served by the options available to them to explore the unspoken terrain of both American history and our collective unconscious in relation to those histories.

“It was a play written for my friends in grad school who were rarely given the chance to be centre stage.

“It was written thinking that the Iseman stage (my university’s black box theatre) would be its first and final home. Yet five years later we have been Off-Broadway, and all over America. And now London.

“Many of the people from the very first reading in my grad school flat have been with the play ever since and are returning to do it in London. it is one of the great honours and gifts of my life that it has made it here.

“I do not take it lightly that this play is one of the rare plays by a black author that has made its way to the West End. I’m incredibly grateful for the trails blazed by the myriad black British writers recently who have broken ground for black writers and audiences on the West End.

“I hope that with this production even more work by writers of colour will find support on our largest commercial stages.”

During its run there will be two “black out” nights on July 17 and September 17 for an all-black identifying audience “free from the white gaze” – a concept from Harris.

In addition, every Wednesday from June 26 at 10am there will be 30 tickets released for the performance priced at £1, while on the morning of each performance there will be 10 seats priced at £20 each.

Tickets go on sale at 12pm on Wednesday at www.slaveplaylondon.com.