David Alan Grier: Henry Brown (nominated for a tony award for best performance by a featured actor in a play)
Richard Thomas: Charles Strickland
James Spader: Jack Lawson (Broadway debut)
Kerry Washington: Susan (Broadway debut)
*Premiere: December 6, 2009 at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre; closed August 21, 2010 (297 performances)
*Crowd for the premiere was predominantly white
*Directed by Mamet himself
The show received mixed reviews:
Ben Brantley, from The New York Times, wrote: "Though the first act of 'Race' is similarly propelled by barbed one-liners, its second act offers reassuring evidence of Mr. Mamet’s scalpel-edged intelligence. And the issues it raises, particularly on the ethnic varieties of shame and the universal nature of guilt, should offer ample nutrition for many a post-theater dinner conversation.... Yet despite the tension of its subject, and an abundance of the corkscrew plot twists for which Mr. Mamet is known, “Race” lacks real dramatic tension."
Charles McNulty of The Times wrote that the play "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." He added: "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."
Elisabeth Vincentelli of The New York Post took one of the harshest stances, writing that "the most stunning thing about the David Mamet play that opened last night is how clunky it is." She noted that "the show's nominally about race, but the elephant in the room is gender... If Hillary Clinton had been elected, would we be watching 'Sex' instead?"
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