Race, Rape, and White Victimhood: David Mamet's "Race"

Just a few minutes into Race, David Mamet's most recent Broadway production, the playwright throws down a verbal gauntlet. Two attorneys, Henry Brown (David Alan Grier) and Jack Lawson (James Spader), meet with a potential client, Charles Strickland (Richard Thomas), who has been charged with rape. With an eye toward the impending trial, the billionaire, a white man accused of raping a black woman, has shrewdly sought out this interracial firm in which Henry, black, and Jack, white, are law partners. As the two attorneys discuss Charles's case, Henry mocks Charles's liberal pretensions. "What can a white man tell a black man about race?" he sneers. Without missing a beat, Charles meekly provides the punch line, "Nothing." Cue laughter.

And there, succinctly stated, is the metaquestion framing the play itself. Can Mamet, a white playwright, tell his audience anything new on the subject of race? As the play proceeds with all the subtlety and efficiency of a hacksaw, it soon becomes clear that Mamet is less interested in saying something novel than in congratulating himself for publicly saying what he wrongly imagines other people will not. Rather than a complex interrogation of black and white racial dynamics, the play is an expression of white, male disaffection in the Age of Obama, a theme that is neither novel nor particularly surprising in its contours. Like the play's signature graphic in which we see a black woman sitting on a bed wearing a sequined minidress that shows her thighs and hints at the triangle above them, the play promises a big reveal but ultimately fails to deliver.

In an overdetermined, nonsensical mystery plot that moves along briskly—the show clocks in at just under ninety minutes—Jack, Henry, and their new black law associate Susan (Kerry Washington) suss out the facts of the case. Along the way, the three debate the character of humanity (largely stupid, according to Jack), the legal system (a glorified street fight, according to Henry), and racial justice (rarely achieved, according to Susan). Where the idealistic Susan insists that it matters whether Charles is guilty or innocent, Jack cynically insists that he does not care whether Charles actually committed the rape, only that he "cultivate the appearance of contrition." It is his job, Jack contends, to walk the jury past its liberal mind-set to a not guilty verdict. While Jack and Susan joust, Henry serves as the play's Greek chorus, puncturing Charles's liberal self-righteousness, Susan's wounded innocence, and Jack's haughty detachment.

It is Grier who delivers the play's most memorable lines, sinking his teeth into what is unquestionably a meaty part and delivering a performance that garnered him a Tony nomination for "Featured Actor in a Play." In one of the play's funnier exchanges, Henry counters Charles's statement that we're all "brothers beneath the skin" by saying "I don't think we're brothers beneath the skin, over the skin, or in any way associated with the skin." Grier, sharply honed from his years as a comedian, is well suited for Mamet's rapid-fire, witty dialogue, as is Spader, who spends the entirety of the play onstage. A first-timer on Broadway, Spader enacts a version of Alan Shore, the ethically challenged character he played for five seasons on the TV drama Boston Legal. "His Jack Lawson is like Alan Shore on Paxil," one critic observed, "calmer and focused but no less brazen."¹ Spader's Jack convincingly hurtles between cynicism and contrition, making the attorney someone for whom one can feel grudging respect, if not empathy. He is comfortable in his own tough skin and avoids judging the flawed, frail creatures he represents unless or until they compromise his legal strategy. When both Grier and Spader are onstage, the air crackles with an electric charge that one could almost mistake for dramatic tension.

As Susan, the less-experienced Washington cannot keep up with Spader or Grier. Her speeches sound arch and contrived, a common pitfall...