RACE Reviews

Loved the set on this as well D2

I hope they get great reviews as the show deserves it. One of Mamet's best.

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The AP is Positive:

"The title is stark in its simplicity but "Race," David Mamet's provocative, hot-topic new play, is anything but simple.

The questions "Race" poses and the answers its characters supply add up to an intriguing study of perception — from both black and white viewpoints. Which means there are no neat, easy conclusions to be drawn even though Mamet throws out some fascinating, dramatically charged opinions, not only on race but on the divide between men and women as well."

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2009/12/06/entertainment/e160253S20.DTL

Entertainment Weekly is a C:

"...The shock is that the author (who previously staged a two-person dramatic tap dance about men and women, truth and lies in Oleanna) elicits little more than a shrug once all the thrusts and parries, revelations and reversals are toted up. The foursome bark out short, blunt, rhetorically provocative dialogue intended to demonstrate that black people and white people are doomed never to understand one another. But the arguments feel like moves on a game board, not words from the heart."
Review

Ugh, it didn't take long before the critics started shouting "misogynist" at the top of their lungs about Mamet.

It's like the original production of "Oleanna" or the book of the play, where the game of chess is so much more evenly played, never existed.

And I really wonder if anyone even saw or read "Boston Marriage" which was, for me, a really hilarious, smart and, yes, feminist portrait of two very brilliant women. You can't just pick the two most recent fairly popular Mamet revivals on Broadway and call him misogynistic without looking at his entire body of work.

Updated On: 12/6/09 at 09:18 PM

Chicago Tribune is a Rave:

"“Race” is wholly watchable. Gripping, actually. Don’t believe anyone who argues otherwise. Granted, it is gripping within a dangerously narrow and familiar palette; “Race” is like a contrived composite of “Oleanna,” “Speed-the-Plow” and a TV legal procedural. There are many holes in its dramatic logic. Mamet doesn’t so much write plays driven by characters anymore. His shell-like characters are the whores of his ideas.

And for all the dramatic provocations (and the brilliant matching of the richly contrasting Grier and Spader), there’s a certain weariness that comes from watching the way that “Race” stubbornly ignores any and all differences in generational thinking and reduces its characters’ loyalties to the color of their skin. It’s a juicily argued reduction, sure, but also a very troubling one. Which is, of course, Mamet’s point. "

http://leisureblogs.chicagotribune.com/the_theater_loop/2009/12/david-mamets-race-playwrights-latest-paints-world-in-black-and-white.html

Variety is Mixed-to-Negative:

"Grier works a little harder to strip back the vocal personality to the required affectless delivery. But the constant sparks as his brusque barbs ricochet off Spader's make it easy to overlook the fact that the writing's dazzle is all on the surface.

Maybe with further refinement, especially in the third and final scene, this play could be more incisive than just a witty provocation. The bones are certainly there. But as it is, it's a lit fuse that crackles and pops but never quite explodes."

http://www.variety.com/review/VE1117941738.html?categoryid=33&cs=1&ref=ssp

And the kiss of death... a not so hot review from Brantley. New York Times falls somewhere between Mixed-to-Negative and Negative (I am leaning more towards negative here). Great review for James Spader though:

"Having put in many television seasons playing cynical lawyers (“The Practice,” “Boston Legal”), Mr. Spader could play Jack with his heavy-lidded eyes closed. He keeps them wide open, and considers every inflection and gesture in creating the one role in “Race” with more layers than the who’s-scamming-whom plot. He’s good enough to make you wish that Mr. Mamet had given his other actors the same opportunity."

http://theater.nytimes.com/2009/12/07/theater/reviews/07race.html?pagewanted=2

That's nice Roxy. Too bad the rest of the tourists in the country aren't you.

I liked the play more than the critics did. I think they went in expecting a very Mamety play, which Race isn't. It's somewhere between old-school Mamet and the sitcom-ish November. I don't think it was bad, just different.

This is not a tourist show as there are no falling chandeliers or or dancing showgirls.

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I'm pleased with the positive notices for Spader, whom I love in almost anything.

LA Times is Negative for the play with commendations for the cast:

“Race,” the title and subject of his new play, which opened Sunday at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre on Broadway, starts strong but loses steam as the playwright approaches his tinderbox topic more like a journalist anxious to appear balanced than a theatrical provocateur wanting to get beneath all the claptrap.

Sure, the profanity rips like only Mamet can rip it, but his ideas lack their usual polemical bite and there’s something tentative about the overall vision. As George Bernard Shaw demonstrated, the theater is an ideal forum for complex public argument on hot-button issues. But the biggest debate this thin play will likely spark is among theatergoers wondering if their tickets were worth the time and expense.

With a title like “Race,” controversy would seem to be a given. Yet Mamet plays a strange shell game with his theme, leaving his characters in a limbo where they’re neither winners nor losers. There might be some truth to this stalemate, but the indecisive drama fizzles to a close. "

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/culturemonster/2009/12/theater-review-david-mamets-race-on-broadway-.html