Race
David Mamet’s Race, newly recast and still drawing curious crowds seven months after its Broadway premiere, is as frustrating a theatrical experience as ever for long-time fans of the acerbic playwright, most renowned for testosterone-dripping classics like American Buffalo and Glengarry Glen Ross.
Essentially a manifesto disguised as a play, Race, which Mamet also directs, is an unpersuasive and grating companion piece to his much-discussed Village Voice essay from a couple of years ago, "Why I Am No Longer a ’Brain-Dead Liberal’," in which Mamet declared that, "a free-market understanding of the world meshes more perfectly with my experience than that idealistic vision I called liberalism." Two responses immediately come to mind when reading this statement of philosophical principle: Fair enough; and, Considering how often the cunningly, if not brutally, self-interested triumph over the weak and the hesitant in Mamet’s plays, no duh!
Obviously, critics should not hold Mamet’s "transformed" political beliefs against him when reviewing his post-liberal work. But, in giving his life to Milton Friedman, Mamet seems simultaneously to have forsaken a few playwriting essentials--such as character development, dramatic tension, and lucidity--at least when it comes to Race, which is all sizzle and no pop. And even the sizzle sounds like something David E. Kelley might have scripted for L.A. Law back in the 1980s.
Race, set in a conference room dwarfed by a wall of law books (nicely designed by Santo Loquasto), opens with two lawyers, the white Jack Lawson (Eddie Izzard) and the black Henry Brown (Dennis Haysbert), lecturing a prospective client, the very white and very wealthy Charles Strickland (Richard Thomas), about racial attitudes in America.
Despite his largesse, Strickland is a particularly problematic defendant for the two attorneys, because he has been criminally charged with raping a young black woman. Even though their law practice does not appear to rise much above "ambulance chasing," Lawson and Brown are wary of taking a case they either might not be able to win or, for public relations reasons, might not want to win.
Breaking up this male triumvirate is Susan (Afton C. Williamson), a recently hired black associate; in driving the play towards its insipid conclusion with behavior that requires a leap of tremendous cynicism to comprehend, she joins an infamous roster of treacherous Mamet women.
Haysbert and Williamson do what they can to flesh out their characters, but their efforts are in the service of a hopeless cause, since Mamet treats Henry and Susan as little more than mouthpieces for his trite suppositions about how blacks view whites, and vice versa. Early in the play, Henry asks the blue-blooded Strickland, "Do you know what you can say to a black man on the subject of race?" After Strickland responds "nothing," Henry quickly agrees, effectively closing off all debate and stopping the play’s dramatic momentum dead in its tracks. The curtain might as well just come down at this point or, at the very least, Haysbert should be allowed to go home, because, really, Henry has said all he has to say.
As has been true throughout the play’s run, Thomas, the only acting holdover, gives a laudable performance, investing his paper-thin character with as much nuance and emotional depth as possible. Of the new cast, Izzard (taking over for the impressive James Spader) fares the best, both because Jack is the play’s most fully realized character and because Izzard is a fantastic stage actor, a fact he first proved to Broadway audiences seven years ago as the lead in Peter Nichols’ A Day in the Death of Joe Egg. Race is only Izzard’s second Broadway production; he deserves more and better opportunities to display his considerable talent.
Race continues through August 21 at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre, 243 West 47th Street. For more information visit www.raceonbroadway.com
