Racy Mamet

David Mamet’s new play “Race” which opened on Broadway last night is about two lawyers defending a rich white man against charges of raping his black girlfriend. “Mamet’s work is clearly meant to be an incendiary examination of racial and gender politics a la his ‘Oleanna.’ Like that play, ‘Race’ ultimately doesn’t quite fulfil its thematic aspirations, but it’s a far more entertaining effort that benefits from the playwright’s trademark crackling dialogue,” writes ABC. In it lawyers Jack Lawson (James Spader) and his black partner (David Alan Grier) are forced to take on the case of the protesting-to-be-innocent Charles Strickland (Richard Thomas) due to a series of inadvertent technicalities caused by an intern in their office. “Despite the many provocative attitudes expressed onstage, the play’s ideas don’t coalesce in meaningful fashion, and the characters, particularly the evasive defendant and the intern with possible motives of her own, never quite come into focus.”