Game of Thrones’ Kit Harington to Star in Slave Play in West End

Game of Thrones star Kit Harington has been cast in the U.K. premiere of Slave Play by Jeremy O. Harris. The production—which, as previously reported, Harris announced on Instagram—will have a limited run from June 29 to September 21 at the Noël Coward Theatre. It is directed by Robert O’Hara, the director of the Broadway production.

Harington made his professional acting debut in War Horse in the West End. More recently, he has starred in London productions of True West and Henry V. The West End cast of Slave Play also includes Fisayo Akinade, Aaron Heffernan and Olivia Washington, alongside actors reprising their roles from the original Broadway production: James Cusati-Moyer, Chalia La Tour, Annie McNamara and Irene Sofia Lucio.

“[Slave Play] was a play written for my friends in grad school who were rarely given the chance to be centerstage," Harris said in a statement. "It was written thinking that the Iseman stage (my university’s black box theater) would be its first and final home. Yet five years later we have been off-Broadway, on 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 honors and gifts of my life that it has made it here.”

Including a shout-out to the work of Black British theater artists such as Arinzé Kene, Kwame Kwei-Armah, Tyrell Williams, Ryan Calais Cameron and Natasha Gordon, Harris added, “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 hope that with this production even more work by writers of color will find support on our largest commercial stages.”

Harris wrote Slave Play while studying at Yale School of Drama. First presented in a workshop production in 2017, Slave Play premiered off-Broadway in 2018 at New York Theatre Workshop. The production subsequently moved to Broadway's John Golden Theatre in 2019, followed by a return Broadway engagement at the August Wilson Theatre from December 2021 to January 2023. The initial Broadway production, directed by Robert O'Hara, earned 10 Tony nominations including Best Play, Best Direction of a Play and Best Lead Actress for Joaquina Kalukango.

Dissecting issues of race, sex and generational trauma, Slave Play follows three interracial couples over an explosive weekend on a Southern plantation. As fantasy blurs with reality, historical patterns begin to repeat themselves.