Reviews

Race

David Mamet’s charged drama puts black-white social relations on trial.

DeWanda Wise and Chris Bauer in David Mamet's Race, directed by Scott Zigler, at Center Theatre Group's Kirk Douglas Theatre.
DeWanda Wise and Chris Bauer in David Mamet's Race, directed by Scott Zigler, at Center Theatre Group's Kirk Douglas Theatre.
(© Craig Schwartz)

Race operates on the assumption that one can never truly address the subject of black-white relations in America without potentially tossing a lit cigarette onto an exposed canister of TNT. Playwright and agent provocateur David Mamet does just that in "Race." From its opening words — a brisk invitation from an attorney to a potential client for a "sit-down" — to its fist-to-the-gut of blackout line 100 minutes later, Race shuttles its audience on a giddy roller-coaster ride through personal and professional ethics, legal maneuvers, back-stabbings, and lessons on the cultural landscape. In the Scott Zigler-directed L.A. premiere at the Kirk Douglas Theatre, the play is a bullet laced with battery acid.

The aforementioned client, a very rich, very prominent white man of uncertain occupation named Charles Strickland (played by Jonno Roberts), has come to the law firm run by Jack Lawson (Chris Bauer) and Henry Brown (Dominic Hoffman) seeking legal representation. Strickland is accused of raping a younger black woman; he has already been through one law firm and the case is all over the news. Smelling a loser but intrigued by the prospect of riding the coattails of a celebrity and a hefty retainer, Jack and Henry are divided over whether to accept Strickland. For equally complicated reasons, they end up signing on, and the play starts to twist and re-twist as new evidence comes in which makes the client look, by turns, not entirely at fault and guilty as sin.

Also put into service to gather evidence, make phone calls and generally be a Jill of all trades is Susan (DeWanda Wise), the firm's recently hired legal assistant who is young, smart, and African-American. The dynamics between Jack (who hired and now mentors her), Henry (who opposed hiring her), and Susan suggests an evolution from Bobby Gould, Charlie Fox, and Karen, the secretary of Mamet's 1988 play Speed-the-Plow. Susan is as interesting a female role as Mamet has written in a long time. Wise, who spends the bulk of the first scene silently taking notes on a MacBook in the spacious and immaculate office (designed by Jeffery P. Eisenmann), ultimately gets into the action with a single-mindedness and soon becomes the play's linchpin.

Roberts, immaculately dressed, patrician, and sporting the slightest hint of an entitled grin even with his life at stake, creeps in and out of the action to keep things interesting. Strickland may be only marginally less sleazy than the legal eagles he is paying to represent him, but he is also savvy enough to strategically try the contrition card. Hoffman's Brown is a quietly cocky realist who by now has earned enough money and prestige so that the rules of race relations espoused by his partner (and now by the firm) no longer apply to him.

Jack likely learned those same rules a long time ago, and he's got the expensive suits and arrogance to prove it. Bauer, whose fast-talking intensity makes him perfect for Mamet-land, propels the character with an engine that runs on standard issue petrol rather than nitroglycerine. The stakes are plenty high here, but Bauer's Jack never seems to lose control, even when the character is effectively defeated.

A frequent director at Mamet's Atlantic Theater Company, Zigler has directed Race before. He and his cast of four are in sync with Mamet's incendiary rhythms…although this play isn't exactly a dance. Race is also a play about the politics and power of sexuality; in fact race and sex relations are intertwined. Mamet doesn't make any first choices when it comes to plot twists. Rather, he takes things in a different direction. There's some very charged interplay of a different sort when Susan and Bauer's Jack start delving into the details of a job application.

The rocky ebbs and flows of Race allow us to confront what we think we know about how things work on the race relations landscape and still be wrong. And Zigler's cast dispensing the medicine, it's an enlightening pill to swallow .

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