David Mamet's Race Against the Cultural Clock

For a playwright very much identified with urban life, David Mamet never hesitates in sending sacred cows out to pasture. His hustlers and con men, ruthless salesmen and sleazy filmmakers--and all those for whom sexual perversity and a potty mouth are signs of true cultural refinement--have little patience for the taboos of the moment, whether it comes in the form of sexual harassment or political correctness.

Race, his latest play, which he also directed, opened this past weekend at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre and presents a two-act tutorial on the relationship between racial tension and racial privilege, the utter unreliability of the legal system to find the truth, and the media's irresistible impulse to spin a story--especially a salacious one--in the most dizzying of ways. (Think Tiger Woods.)

And Mamet lavishes his four fine actors (James Spader, David Alan Grier, Kerry Washington and Richard Thomas) with a lot of open field running of the Mamet mouth--long speeches that are equally long on ideas and laughs, repeated phrases, syncopated rhythms and enough salty language to make the audience wonder whether Broadway has suddenly gone bawdy burlesque.

But, of course, Mamet is, as always, most serious when it comes to a seal of approval that was prematurely granted. While most conversations about race inspire deep ambivalence if not outright silence, Mamet converts the stage into a raucous racial seminar jacked up on truth serum. When it comes to white America's complicated history with the black man, Mamet shies away from nothing, especially the conflicting sensitivities of the white man's guilt and the black man's shame--all in less than two hours of dramatic theater.

Here's the set-up: A rich white businessman (Richard Thomas) is accused of raping his much younger African-American mistress in a hotel room. After falling out with his Jewish attorney he seeks out a law firm headed by the always brilliant James Spader, who, after years of portraying Alan Shore on TV's The Practice and Boston Legal is now Exhibit A when it comes to the cynically manipulative yet emotionally honest attorney-for-hire, and his African-American associates, David Alan Grier and Kerry Washington.

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