THEATRE REVIEW: RACE


Pictured: Jason Priestley, Nigel Shawn Williams

JOHN COULBOURN, Special to TorSun
14 APRIL 2013
R: 3.5/5

TORONTO - It sits at our very core  — one of the things by which we too often define ourselves and by which we are too often defined, for good or for ill. And nowhere is the whole issue of race more complicated, perhaps, than in America, where a legacy forged in slavery and segregation continues to hold an entire nation in its thrall, despite attempts by people of all races to heal their wounds and move forward.
 Just how complicated is evidenced by playwright David Mamet who, in his latest work, fittingly titled RACE, sets out to do for racial relations what he did for relations between the sexes in his highly controversial two-hander Oleanna. It’s an interesting choice as the vehicle Canadian Stage has chosen to mark the first 25 years in theatre — a quarter-century that began with a production of Mamet’s Glengarry Glen Ross. It opened Thursday at the Bluma Appel.


RACE is a tension-charged work from its very opening scene, as the lawyers in a small but successful small-town American law firm meet with a wealthy local man accused of rape. The accused, played by a too-youthful Matthew Edison, is white, as is the lawyer who is clearly at the helm of the firm, played by Jason Priestley, but the young victim of the crime in question is African American, as are the other two lawyers in the firm, a partner, played by Nigel Shawn Williams, and a junior, played by Cara Ricketts.


The accused is determined to engage the firm to act as his defence and while the partners are reluctant, they are soon embroiled in the case nonetheless —  a case fraught not just with racial overtones but class and sexual tension as well. It is, in many ways, vintage Mamet, despite the playwright’s much ballyhooed conversion to conservative politics — an often bleak, always thought-provoking and profanity-laced exploration of the underbelly of American life, astutely observed and couched in the kind of elegant prose that never, ever suffers a preposition to hang on the end of a sentence. But even as the play dissects the ongoing effort to balance power, sexual politics and, most importantly, race in the world’s most powerful nation, director Daniel Brooks suffers from a power balance of his own.


While Williams and Ricketts are comfortable in their roles, Priestley simply lacks the dramatic heft to play Jack Lawson, perhaps the best drawn of the four characters and a man who clearly sees himself, in his private moments, as the leonine heir to the noble liberal traditions of Atticus Finch. 
And while Debra Hanson’s barebones set may indeed serve to focus an audience on the debate at the heart of RACE, it also serves to undermine both Priestley and Willams in their attempt to create the feeling of a successful firm with much at stake. RACE will still send you from the theatre with much to ponder, regardless of your political stripe, of course, but, as it plays, it simply lacks the tension to make it truly memorable.