Race

Run Time:
1 hour and 40 minutes, with one intermission

Opened: December 6, 2009
Closing: August 21, 2010

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Race - 2009 - Broadway Tickets, News, Info & More

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Ethel Barrymore Theatre (Broadway)

243 West 47th St. New York, NY

From Pulitzer Prize winner David Mamet, comes his most explosive four-letter word yet. Race.

Race is the riveting new play by America’s foremost playwright, Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award winner David Mamet (Glengarry Glen Ross, Speed-the-Plow, American Buffalo, November).

Directed by the playwright, it stars Emmy Award winner James Spader (“Boston Legal,” Sex, Lies and Videotape), Tony nominee and television star David Alan Grier (“A Soldier’s Story,” “In Living Color”, “Chocolate News”), Kerry Washington (Ray, Lakeview Terrace) and Richard Thomas (“The Waltons,” Democracy, Twelve Angry Men).

Race - 2009 - Broadway Cast

Ray Anthony Thomas

Jordan Lage

Dennis Haysbert

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FEATURED REVIEWS FOR Race

Race

4 / 10

For the most part, the play is an engaging piece of cultural dialogue. But by the same token, it is considerably undercooked. The characters are broadly sketched and undistinctive, rather like mouthpieces designed just to take opposing positions. Mamet ends the play abruptly by revealing that a confession has been made, putting a quick end to the ambiguity and argumentation upon which the play thrived. And besides some gratuitously graphic language, there's nothing shocking or even original about "Race."

David Mamet's 'Race' raises difficult questions

7 / 10

Race may be the central theme, but Mamet, who also directed, is more interested in how differences – in color, gender, ethnicity and class – foster a lack of communication and breed resentment. "It's a complicated world, full of misunderstandings," Lawson observes. "That's why we have lawyers." The line seems at once sarcastic and pedantic. Though Race can be bitingly funny, some of Lawson and Brown's comments threaten to veer into speechifying. Lawson, especially, seems at times to be venting on behalf of the playwright, whose disdain for the strictures of political correctness is well known.