A hot-button criminal case is the impetus for the events of Race, by David Mamet. For the legal firm approached by the accused, what happens is the stuff of buzz words as well as ugliness of the highest post–politically correct order. Yet in the Jewish Ensemble Theatre production directed by Christopher Bremer, however strenuous the conceptual workout, attention to the people in this world returns the largest reward.
Scenic designer Jennifer Maiseloff creates an imposing corporate high-rise setting in shades of gray, backed by a pen-and-ink skyline alive with visible strokes and shading. The depth and detail created with only two shades prove a fitting choice for a play that examines dichotomies: black and white, rich and poor, guilty and innocent, just and profitable. Michael Beyer’s lighting scheme casts a pallor on the artificiality of the surroundings, and Hank Bennett’s superior-jazz sound design elicits a smug happy-hour feel. This is undoubtedly the kind of office where a rich-beyond-measure white man would seek legal counsel in response to a rape accusation made by a black woman.
Partners Henry Brown (Harold Hogan) and Jack Lawson (Bennett) and junior associate Susan (Lisa Lauren Smith) make for an especially compelling hire: Henry and Susan are black, and Jack is white. Henry and Jack are acutely aware of the case's many intersecting implications — of color, of social stature, and of a crime frequently and easily muddled in semantics and intention. They’re also marginally concerned about whether their potential client is actually guilty, but only in terms of whether they can make a case for him. The process of preliminary investigations demonstrates the mechanism of their process, but also allows the partners to pontificate about the larger issues of race and perception in moments of lull — true to the playwright’s modus operandi, no topic, angle, or choice verbiage is off limits. With the bulk of the show resting on their shoulders, Hogan and Bennett strain to stretch the script’s archetypal constraints; however, given that the duo is primarily tasked with tersely dissecting every possible outlook, it’s an uphill climb. Amid the bluster and officiousness, Hogan’s performance reveals moments of introspection that invite contemplation of his business decisions in a white-dominated world. Bennett, a courageous eleventh-hour replacement in a casting miasma, was working with script in hand when this reviewer was in attendance; the circumstance warrants no shortage of goodwill, and viewers attending later performances will almost certainly see an improvement on the flatly barking mouthpiece of the opening weekends.
The supporting roles, by contrast, have a leg up by virtue of their every thought process not being laid out and diagrammed. John Manfredi has the shortest appearance as the utterly impassive accused, a vile excuse for a human being whose extreme privilege and means have allowed him to entirely divorce liability from culpability. However, the greatest achievement is Smith’s; her merely listening to the room proves among the most telling work of the show. For every nakedly frank discussion of the prudence of using Susan for a courtroom reenactment, the barest hint of someone registering the sound of a footfall can be just as enlightening. At the performance I attended, Smith’s vigilant responses to stimuli that weren’t overwhelmingly apparent under the circumstances helped elucidate the director’s intent. Her intimate deference to Jack speaks volumes about the office dynamic and lays solid groundwork for the case — and the defense — to develop in concert.
It’s difficult to give a fair assessment to a production in these imperfect circumstances: describing what is cheats the company of its capacity to grow and discover over the course of the run, but describing what might be is pure conjecture. However, it's likely that Mamet never needed this much help getting his insistent intentions across. Bremer looks at black and white and outputs gray, but the best moments of this Race emerge from soft and unexpected corners of the palette.