The UK premiere of David Mamet’s Race at Hampstead Theatre is compelling, funny, and shocking. The design is slick, the dialogue volatile, and Clarke Peters and Jasper Britton are mesmerising; it’s one of those productions that gets its teeth into your attention and does not let go.
Nevertheless, critics on both sides of the pond have found that the play itself does not live up to Mamet’s previous work. Some say it lacks emotional depth, that Mamet’s characters are simply dramatic mouthpieces for different points of view. Others say the play fails to achieve what it sets out to do, namely add anything to the debate on race. Most consider it to lack the theatrical precision for which Mamet is known, but I feel that many of the criticisms of the play are unjustified.
Critics rail against it for not dealing with its theme. Michael Billington, for example, writes that it ‘seeks to land a knockout blow on liberal pieties about race but leaves them largely unscathed’. But is this really true? Mamet writes in the New York Times in 2009 that Race is intended to be an addition to America’s national dialogue about race. The ostentatious title also suggests that Mamet does want to say something about race with this play, but in reality, he does not say anything about it at all.
There are two plots at work in Race. One is the onstage text which is set in a moderately successful, and multicultural, law firm. This plot’s drama is established around whether two of the firm’s partners, one of whom is white and the other black, will agree to defend an old, rich, white man accused of raping a young, poor, black woman. Although race is obviously at play here, ultimately, this story is about the law, and therefore the truth.
The other is the offstage plot. This is the story of the rape itself, and the racially influenced dealings of our onstage characters. Race is thus the theme in the offstage plot, but that isn’t the play we’ve come to see. What the audience sees is a satire on the legal profession whose subtext is about race. But does this matter?
Not really. In fact, there is a wonderful irony about a play which claims it is adding to the “national dialogue” on race and then never actually says anything about it. Maybe that is the point? Or maybe this lack of opinion is actually a consequence of Mamet’s real concern which is the absence of truth in the world? Either way, I can’t see why his ambiguity on the subject is necessarily a bad thing. Race is entertaining drama, and this production by Hampstead is a perfect exhibition of the writing. The play’s ambiguity may offend or amuse, but at any rate it provides a great talking point for post-theatre discussion.
Race at Hampstead Theatre, Eton Avenue, Swiss Cottage, London NW3 3EU, until 29th June 2013. For more information and tickets visit the website.
