David Mamet is routinely praised for a
dramatic language which is both stylised and naturalistic in its
repetitions and incompletenesses. However, he has grown increasingly
imprisoned by these linguistic expectations.
Boston Marriage, in 1999, was his
last major play not to be set in a professionally or socially
restrictive environment (and even the latter aspect is arguable).
Race, his 2009 work (opening in
London coincidentally the month after its Toronto première), is his
second play this century located in the legal world (following his dire
courtroom farce
Romance), and
I suspect this is taking an easy way out for the Mametian twists of
argument: putting them in the context of attorneys formulating a case
gives events a ready-made stake, rather than having to imbue them with
a drama of their own.
Race is, I suppose, a play
about truth, justice and the American way, except that the first two
are consistently shown to be mutable at best if not wholly illusory,
and that very wispiness is what constitutes the third. Two law
partners, one black and the other white, discuss whether or not to
accept a defence brief for a middle-aged, rich white man accused of
raping a young black woman; the lawyers’ assistant is also a young
black woman. In some ways it’s a legal rewrite of Mamet’s
Speed-The-Plow, with the assistant
turning out to be far more crucial than she at first appears… except,
of course, that if we have seen the earlier play, we are already alert
to that likelihood, so once again the drama is diminished.
What remains is argument. Argument about… well, that title isn’t in any
way misleading. Mamet’s thesis, such as it is, is that race is not just
an inevitably hot topic, but a prism through which it is impossible
ever to see straight or clearly. To the extent that this is true, it is
a truism. However, as with political correctness in the case of
Romance, Britain’s experience of
racial issues is not charged along the same lines as America’s; Mamet’s
comments are neither as intellectually valid here nor as emotionally
high-tension, unlike those of for instance Bruce Norris in
Clybourne Park. Terry Johnson’s
production is agile, with Clarke Peters and especially Jasper Britton
on fine form as the counselors, but they remain arguments on legs
rather than characters, and Mamet has little of interest or import to
tell us.
Written for the Financial
Times.