Race
Plays about lawyers practicing their craft contain inherent dangers. On the surface, it should be a no-brainer, since the law is nothing but argument-counter argument. So it has been since Aeschylus’ Oresteia through Twelve Angry Men.
The problem is, that’s all it is: verbal gymnastics. Rather than expanding this hoary genre, venerable playwright David Mamet falls into the trap. His newest effort, Race, takes place entirely in the law office of a mid-level firm where two partners, one black, one white, and a young black female associate argue the merits of a rich white man accused of raping a black woman in a hotel room.
As the title broadcasts, the racial identity of the four players is meant to be key. Mamet has apparently strived to write an "incendiary" piece about the pervasive role race plays in our society. I use ironic quotes because I never would have known that was his intention without reading feature stories about the play. In fact, it’s about as incendiary as a firecracker in a rainstorm.
The tired back-and-forth arguments about the potentially interesting subjects of white men and black women, affirmative action, a purportedly color-blind justice system and black aspirations in a white-dominated society ring has hollow as the paint-by-numbers plot.
If you want a provocative discussion of race in America, rent DVDs of Richard Pryor concerts, or watch a few South Park episodes. For that matter, Law and Order does a far more efficient job of presenting social issues in a legal context.
The smoking gun that the high-priced law firm’s lead attorney discovers will be immediately obvious to anyone who has watched the old Perry Mason TV show. It becomes downright laughable when the lawyer is outwitted by the prosecutor and police who amazingly discover the same thing: that a sequin dress, when ripped off a woman, discards sequins all over the room.
Mamet did himself no favors when he directed his own work. Everyone stands around, with no stage business or drama or interaction of any kind. The man who virtually invented overlapping dialogue and natural dialogue has his characters speaking in clear cadences and politely waiting for each other to finish before declaiming.
This kind of thing works with classic French tragedy, but high-powered, high-pressure New York lawyers? Fuggedaboutit!
As for the acting, James Spader gives exactly the performance you’d expect from someone who has spent his life playing smarmy, smart yuppies. I only hope he comes back to Broadway soon in a play worthy of his talents.
David Alan Grier plays the firm’s black partner with the right touch of obsequiousness and suppressed rage. As the rich guy, the usually reliable Richard Thomas is surprisingly stiff, flat and wooden. His line readings have all the dramatic impact of one those announcers rattling off the legal notifications at the end of an automobile advertisement.
As the young associate, Kerry Washington seems to lack any direction whatsoever. She has three basic poses: leaning against a solid object, upheld by her straightened arms; standing up with her arms folded; or sitting at a desk with her skirt hiked up to give a clear of her very nice legs. However she is posed, she looks like someone in the room just broke wind.
Maybe she’s mad because she doesn’t have anything to do. It’s suggested that she wear a sequin dress in the courtroom to prove a point. Would it have been so terrible to have the two partners force her to put on a hooker’s dress, thereby demeaning her and maybe giving her a motive for her actions? Instead, she’s given some standard-issue agitprop to spout, plus a very undefined scandal involving a trip to Venice instead of Rome when she was in college. When a playwright makes a point about racial inequality by having a striving black student vacationing in Venice instead of Rome, you know you’re on shaky ground.
As in Speed the Plow, it’s the betrayal by a woman that triggers the denouement, but any association with any of the larger issues cataloged above is purely incidental. Instead of using this case to make larger points about race, Mamet has given us an amateur procedural drama that would make a soap opera writer blush with shame. Final mention must be made of what may be the worst curtain-closer I’ve ever seen in a Broadway drama.
Although it’s certainly a step up from his last Broadway effort, the ridiculously bad November, Race only solidifies this reviewer’s opinion that Mamet has allowed his simplistic political views to taint his playwriting ability. Whether he can relieve himself of his cant and get back to lovable losers remains to be seen.
Race is playing an open-ended run at the Ethel Barrymore Theater, 243 West 47th Street; (212) 239-6200. Go to the play’s website for more information.
