The playwright on exes, 3AM confessions, and why Slippery is the anti-romantic drama we need
There’s something about 3AM that strips everything away. The pretense, the performance, the version of yourself you’ve carefully constructed for the daylight hours. It’s the hour when you’re too tired to lie, when all bets are off, when the world feels like it’s shrunk down to just you and whoever you’re with. It’s the perfect setting for a play about exes, addiction, and all the things we wish we’d said.
Louis Emmitt-Stern’s Slippery takes place entirely in that liminal space. It’s 3AM in a London flat. Jude and Kyle have just returned from A&E. Jude has slipped, literally, but as the 70 minutes unfold, we discover they’re both falling in much deeper ways. They haven’t seen each other for a decade since their messy breakup, and old habits die hard.
I caught up with Louis just before press night at Omnibus Theatre in Clapham, where the play is having its world premiere. He’d just come off his second preview, and there was a mix of excitement and nervous energy in his voice. This play has been a long time coming.
The ex you’ll never see again
“It’s not autobiographical in any way this play,” Louis tells me, “but I think every idea sort of, it’s good to say that I think, every play begins I think from something in my life and I was definitely thinking about somebody or thinking about a conversation I would like to have with someone who I knew I’d probably never see again.”
It’s a feeling most of us know too well. That ex. The one where there are things left unsaid, moments you wish you could take back, versions of yourself you’d rather forget. Louis was imagining what that meeting would look like, and being honest about how it probably wouldn’t go the way you’d hope.
“Actually that probably in the moment it wouldn’t be as kind of cool and I wouldn’t be quite as nonchalant as I probably hoped I’d be and I’d maybe be betrayed by like the ghost of who I used to be and how quickly would I fall back into a version of myself that I was around them,” he says. “I think that was kind of the thing that was really interesting to me with these two characters and where that kind of started.”
There’s something deeply relatable about that. The way we can spend years becoming someone new, only to meet an ex and instantly regress to whoever we were when we were with them. Slippery explores that slippage, that loss of control, with honesty and humor.
Finding the title
The title came later in the process, and it works on multiple levels. There’s the literal slip that brings Jude and Kyle together again, the slippery slope of addiction, the way relationships can be slippery ground. But there’s something else too.
“There was something great about also that the word slippery is like it’s sort of in motion as well,” Louis explains. “It’s sort of like something is happening and like you’re sort of you’re not slipped it’s not sort of past tense and it’s not like but it’s like slippery it’s like something is slippery it’s live.”
Even the spaghetti carbonara that features in the play gets a mention. “This slippery pasta which is very slippery we’ve discovered in rehearsal,” Louis laughs. “So yeah superficially metaphorically literally it kind of just fit really nicely.”
The magic of 3AM
Setting the entire play at 3AM in one confined space was a deliberate choice, and it gives Slippery its dramatic tension.
“We all know like what that is staying up till 3AM and and thinking about things,” Louis says. “I think that was just that’s like you sort of especially when you’re just slightly overtired you just become a slightly different person and it feels like all bets are off a little bit and also I think there’s just something really exciting in there’s nowhere to go like nothing is open at 3AM.”
It’s the final frontier, as he puts it. The moment before the day begins, before the world starts again. “There’s a sort of great feeling sometimes when you’re up at 3AM or like or you’re up with someone at 3AM and you sort of feel like you’re the only two people awake on the whole planet which is obviously not true but there is that sort of feeling.”
That intimacy, that sense of being the only two people in the world, is what makes the play work. And the confined space means that when one of them leaves, the play is over. “How do they keep each other?” Louis asks. It’s a question that drives the entire piece.
Comedy and darkness
Slippery is described as a heart-stopping comedy-drama, and Louis is adamant that the comedy is essential. After two previews, he’s relieved to hear audiences laughing.
“It can’t feel heavy I think especially not at the beginning,” he says. “It’s actually been testament to a lot of the work that John and Perry, John McCrea and Perry Williams have been doing in rehearsal with director Matthew Iliffe about making sure that those moments have levity because it does like you said it does deal with some really tricky and serious themes.”
But there’s also something true about the mix of light and dark. “There’s that thing about uh about exes right and about um that you even though there are probably lots of stuff that’s stored and lots of things that you sort of feel resentful for yeah often it can be sort of quite it can knock you a little bit to remember that actually you did have some good times with this person even if they define you or you define that period quite negatively.”
Relationships are never just one thing. They’re complicated, messy, full of contradictions. Slippery honors that complexity.
Partnership with London Friend
One of the most important aspects of the production is the partnership with London Friend, specifically their Antidote service, which supports people in the LGBTQ+ community with drug and alcohol recovery.
“They’re amazing and the work they do is incredible and uh and they are sort of tackling the themes of these plays day to day um in the real world,” Louis says. “So it sort of felt um really important for us to work with them um and also to sort of spread awareness of the service that they offer.”
The collaboration has been invaluable. London Friend has been in rehearsals, chatting with the actors and providing insights that have shaped the production. “I think I can speak on behalf of the team that we’re so grateful for their involvement in the project,” Louis says.
The play will feature post-show talks and signpost London Friend’s services, opening up conversations beyond the 70 minutes on stage. “This play deals with one couple um but we wanted to sort of open out that conversation and for people to to go and continue talking about these ideas and these themes beyond just the play,” Louis explains.
He’s also clear about his responsibility as a playwright. “It was really important to be non-judgmental about it on both sides and actually like my job as a playwright is sort of to present this relationship and um and these two people have uh views on on themselves and on the other person um but actually that the play was never trying to say one thing or another about how to handle a recovery.”
It’s one relationship, one story, but hopefully it opens a conversation.
The Soho Theatre journey
Slippery won the Soho Theatre’s Tony Craze Award, and for Louis, that recognition was transformative.
“I love that building so much and especially all the people that were that were there at the time it was sort of the first the first building that really sort of championed me as a writer and my and my voice,” he says. “I actually probably think I wouldn’t be a writer if they hadn’t supported me.”
But the journey wasn’t straightforward. Louis applied to the Soho Theatre Writers Lab three years in a row. The first two times, he was rejected.
“Then the third year I got on and I wrote this play and it won the Tony Craze and I’m actually really grateful in hindsight for both of those rejections because if I’d if I’d done that program two years or one year earlier I wouldn’t have written this play,” he reflects. “So it was sort of like they knew when exactly the right time was.”
It’s a lesson he’s taken to heart. “I kind of now try and just welcome the rejections and um know that actually like when it’s ready I’ll I’ll be there um just trusting trust sort of journey.”
Trojan horse romantic dramas
Looking at Louis’s body of work, there’s a thread that connects everything. “I always joke I said this yesterday to someone that I write Trojan horse romantic dramas,” he tells me. “And that actually I’m kind of really interested in in that romantic relationship between human beings and and not sort of the glittery Hollywood version but the sort of anti-rom-com anti-romantic drama.”
He’s fascinated by the small bits of human existence, the way we connect with each other, the emphasis we put on romantic relationships. “I’m really fascinated by I suppose like the really small bits of human existence and the human experience,” he says.
Even his sci-fi play I F*cked You in My Spaceship was really a romantic drama. Slippery is too, in its own way. “I always say it’s kind of a weird weird kind of ghost story yes but it’s really a romantic drama and it’s about addiction it’s really about two people who know each other really really well but also not at all.”
Press night and beyond
When we spoke, it was press night. Louis had moved through the adrenaline of the first preview and the grounding of the second, and he was feeling surprisingly calm.
“I started writing this play about six years ago and I finished writing about five years ago so it’s been a long time coming to share it with the world,” he says. “I think I’m probably just most excited for it to exist and for now to be running as well.”
There’s something beautiful about that. After years of development, rejections, rewrites, and waiting, Slippery is finally out in the world. It’s a play about the conversations we wish we’d had, the versions of ourselves we can’t escape, and the messy, complicated reality of loving someone and losing them.
It’s also, as Louis promises, funny. And at 3AM in a London flat, with nowhere else to go and nothing left to hide behind, that feels exactly right.
Slippery runs at Omnibus Theatre, Clapham until 11th April 2026. Performances are at 7:30pm Tuesday-Saturday, 2:30pm Saturday, and 4:30pm Sunday. Tickets are available at omnibus-clapham.org/slippery.
The production is in partnership with London Friend. For more information about their services, including Antidote, visit londonfriend.org.uk.