STAGERace
Hampstead Theatre
★★★✩✩
IN A NUTSHELL
David Mamet's muscular prose commands the stage in a world-weary no-holds-barred dissection of race in America.
REVIEW
The Manhattan law firm of Lawson and Brown has new employee. She's black, talented, pretty, young and (obviously) a woman.
Which of those adjectives are acceptable, if any? And what of Lawson and Brown themselves. Is it obvious which one is black and, if so, does it matter?
It does to wealthy (and, sadly, 2D) Charles Strickland (Charles Daish) because he's dumped his (Jewish) lawyer and opted for this feisty practice because he's a white guy accused of raping a black woman and he needs all the help he can get. Is that OK? Can he ever be found guilty in a country driven to extremes by guilt and shame?
These are the spiky questions that David Mamet poses in his combative dissection of race and prejudice.
"As a Jew I will relate there is nothing a non-Jew can say to a Jew on the subject of Jewishness that is not patronising, upsetting or simply wrong. I assume the same holds true among African-Americans," he says.
And so Jack Lawson (Jasper Britton) and Henry Brown (Clarke Peters) wrestle with the pros and cons of winning and losing with their high-profile client.
This is set about with the muscular to and fro that makes Mamet such a compelling master craftsman. Lawson is rich in rhetoric and loquacious guile, Brown is more forensic - and bruised - and the two charismatic actors relish the urgency and importance of their discourse.
But, shocks aside (and a-plenty), little new is uncovered and prejudices barely budge amid the brutal sparring. Even enigmatic ingenue Susan (Nina Toussaint-White) is ultimately as jaded, tricksy and weary as the old guard.
Exciting, compelling and provocative, yes. Progressive and enlightening, sadly no.
Until June 29, hampsteadtheatre.com
