Kit Harington shows off his incredibly ripped physique as Slave Play director cheekily shares shirtless snap of him backstage

By Amelia Wynne For Mailonline

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Kit Harington showed off his incredibly ripped physique in a shirtless snap on Wednesday.

The Game of Thrones actor, 37, is currently starring in Slave Play at the Noel Coward Theatre in London's West End.

And playwright Jeremy O. Harris cheekily shared the sizzling picture of him backstage to his Instagram. 

He then joked in the caption: 'Kit's gonna kill me for posting this... (share it so he will forgive me).'

Kit looked to just be chilling backstage as some of the cast and crew sat about near him in the dressing room.

Kit Harington showed off his incredibly ripped physique in a shirtless snap on Wednesday. The Game of Thrones actor, 37, is currently starring in Slave Play in London's West End

Kit Harington showed off his incredibly ripped physique in a shirtless snap on Wednesday. The Game of Thrones actor, 37, is currently starring in Slave Play in London's West End

Playwright Jeremy O. Harris cheekily shared the sizzling picture of him backstage to his Instagram

Playwright Jeremy O. Harris cheekily shared the sizzling picture of him backstage to his Instagram

He also shared snaps of the cast backstage and some of the incredible audiences they have had in attendance so far. 

The play arrived on the West End after getting its own HBO doc and glitzy Broadway audiences, which included Rihanna - whose song Work is reprised during the play.

However, the production was hit by outrage in its off-Broadway run back in 2018 when a petition for closure was launched.

The petition was created by a Black woman who branded the play 'one of the most disrespectful displays of anti-Black sentiment' she had ever seen.

It gained more than 6,000 signatures and the cast received death threats, while the hashtag #ShutDownSlavePlay was made on Twitter.

Once the play hit Broadway it did not create the same level of outrage, however members of the audience regularly walked out during performances, according to The Independent.

The play did cause a stir when it was revealed that their would be two Black Out nights geared towards black audiences, after producers announced shows 'free from the white gaze' in February.

At the time, a spokesperson for then-Prime Minister Rishi Sunak criticised the move and said 'restricting audiences on the basis of race would be wrong and divisive'.

He also shared snaps of the cast backstage and some of the incredible audiences they have had in attendance so far

He also shared snaps of the cast backstage and some of the incredible audiences they have had in attendance so far

The play arrived on the West End after getting its own HBO doc and glitzy Broadway audiences, which included Rihanna - whose song Work is reprised during the play

The play arrived on the West End after getting its own HBO doc and glitzy Broadway audiences, which included Rihanna - whose song Work is reprised during the play

The Independent reviewer, said: 'It's never an easy watch – and its Black Out nights feel like an important gesture to Black audiences who don't want white discomfort to define their experience of it.' 

But with or without the injection of A-list glamour, the play has still received four star reviews, with one critic at The Guardian branding it 'an event'.

The reviewer challenged anyone to 'leave the play without needing to argue in favour or against, describe moments, express solidarity or otherwise.'

The 12-time Tony nominated play follows three interracial couples as they work on their relationships through a highly unusual type of sex therapy.

The 12-time Tony nominated play follows three interracial couples as they work on their relationships through a highly unusual type of sex therapy

The 12-time Tony nominated play follows three interracial couples as they work on their relationships through a highly unusual type of sex therapy

Kaneisha (Olivia Washington) and Jim (Kit) are joined by two other interracial couples: Alana (Annie McNamara) and Phillip (Aaron Heffernan), plus Gary (Fisayo Akinade) and his (it turns out) actor boyfriend Dustin.

The Evening Standard warned future audiences 'prepare to be shocked' during the 'uncomfortable watch' which uses racist language and 'pornographic Deep South slavery fantasies'.

The lowest rating came from The Times, who offered the play two stars, and claimed: 'the satire of Slave Play can all feel a bit five years ago '. However they did note that it may because that is how long it has taken to get to the West End.

SLAVE PLAY: REVIEWS 

The Guardian

Rating:

It feels distinctly like an American play, confronting plantation slavery, although the therapy section brings a more generalised trauma for Black characters. It feels of a specific moment, too, and seems to predict BLM anger with language used in the resurgence of the 2020 movement (from likening racism to a 'virus' to the acknowledgment of white supremacy).

Clint Ramos's set hides its shocks behind a mirrored back wall that reflects the audience (it was such a mirroring that inspired Harris to create the concept of Black Out nights) and it reminds us, lest we forget, that this is a play about the way 'we' look alongside the characters on stage.

Ultimately, all of us are implicated, mirror or no mirror. I challenge anyone to leave Slave Play without needing to argue in favour or against, describe moments, express solidarity or otherwise. It might be flawed but it is charismatic, needling theatre. An event.

The Independent 

Rating:

Harris's play is full of a sharp satirical intelligence that makes the right words fall from the wrong mouths, and resists pat conclusions. 

It's never an easy watch – and its Black Out nights feel like an important gesture to Black audiences who don't want white discomfort to define their experience of it. But it is a necessary one, showing how old power structures linger, covered over by messy, fleshy protuberances of desire.

Evening Standard 

Rating:

Prepare to be shocked. Jeremy O. Harris's bold, scabrously witty 2018 play sees three contemporary couples enact pornographic Deep South slavery fantasies as a form of therapy, designed to reignite the black characters' vanished passion for their white partners. At least five people walked out the night I was there.

It's not an easy watch, not just because of the racist language and discomfiting power-dynamics. The role-playing leads to long sessions where the couples and their therapists (who are also in a racially mixed lesbian relationship) angrily express their feelings. Clint Ramos's echoey mirrored set – enabling the mostly white audience to watch themselves voyeuristically watching – also makes it hard to hear at times.

The Times

Rating:

If the satire of Slave Play can all feel a bit five years ago, that may be because that's how long it has taken to get from hot-ticket acclaim on Broadway — including 12 Tony award nominations — to the West End. 

Revived here, it boasts some acute moments and fine performances from its Anglo-American cast. 

Yet Jeremy O Harris's play comes across as the sort of ideas-led piece that would stimulate over an hour but has instead unwisely swollen to two hours.

Financial Times 

Rating:

The tone of Robert O'Hara's staging, likewise, is heightened, acknowledging the role drama has had in perpetuating ideas, repeatedly exploiting the friction between stereotype and reality. 

Yet all the performances are agonisingly truthful. There's outstanding, intricate work from Fisayo Akinade and James Cusati-Moyer as a tormented gay couple while Kit Harington, as the British Jim, and Olivia Washington, as the American Kaneisha, are distressingly good as they trace their harrowing journey. Questions nag at you — would the couples continue once they knew the premise of the programme? And the final scene is extremely upsetting.

But then that's surely Harris's point — that if we don't properly face the issues we've inherited, with frankness, then we have no hope of moving forward. Clint Ramos's set of mirrored walls pointedly drives that home. A tough, troubling, revealing play: proof again that the stage has become an excellent place to grapple, collectively, with our fraught and freighted times and to help us listen better to our own responses.

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