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by David Mamet, directed by Daniel Brooks

Canadian Stage, Bluma Appel Theatre, Toronto

April 11-May 5, 2013

“Lawyers on Trial”

Canadian Stage gives David Mamet’s 2009 play Race its Toronto premiere in a stylish, impeccably directed production.  Although Canadian Stage is promoting the show as the return to the stage by Vancouver-born television actor Jason Priestley, his presence on stage is not the reason to see the show.  Rather, the thought-provoking play gives us Canadians a glimpse of how issues of race, conceived in terms of black versus white, continue as a divisive construct in the minds of our neighbours to the south.  On a more general level, the play exposes how rational minds use reason to justify irrational perceptions.

The story initially concerns whether a team of lawyers should accept the case of a wealthy, white man Charles Strickland (Matthew Edison), who is accused of raping a black woman.  Senior lawyers the white Jack Lawson (Priestley) and the black Henry Brown (Nigel Shawn Williams) are united in believing that no jury is likely to find Strickland innocent, even if he is, simply because the scenario of white men, especially rich white men, abusing black women is so unshakeably imbedded as a concept in people’s minds.  When Susan (Cara Ricketts), the black junior lawyer on the team, makes a mistake that obliges the firm to take the case, Lawson and Brown shift focus and try to find the angle they can use to replace the pre-existing narrative of exploitation in the jury’s mind with a narrative that makes it feel good about setting a rich white man free.  Escalating conflicts within the law team make finding that new narrative impossible.   

Canadians may be surprised to see that Mamet views hatred between black and white as so long-standing in the United States that it has become a psychological structure that can be temporarily suppressed but not eradicated.  In this way it is parallel to the basic suspicion that Mamet has portrayed between male and female in a play like Oleanna (1992) or the basic competitiveness of male with male in a play like Glengarry Glen Ross (1984).  Mamet’s extreme pessimism about human nature is in part what makes his plays so provocative.

Less provocative are Lawson’s speeches about the function of trials.  To him the are not about justice, which usually comes about as an accident.  The actual innocence or guilt of the client is immaterial.  What is more important is which side puts on a better show for its audience, the jury.  Given that under law every person deserves the right to a defence, lawyers will naturally have to defend those they personally consider guilty.  In Race Mamet shows that lawyers are just as guilty as other people in making snap judgements about innocence or guilt based on race and sex.  Before they have any of the evidence, Lawson and Brown assume Strickland is innocent while Susan “knows” he is guilty.

Priestley is given the meatiest role in the play.  While he could reveal more overt and subliminal aggression in Lawson, his lack of perturbation when making the most incendiary statements has the positive effect of making his Lawson seem totally inured to cynicism.  Unlike his cast-mates, Priestley does not quite project all the way to the back of the auditorium, but does not make the mistake that so many screen actors do on the stage of not projecting at all.  Is he the perfect actor for the role?  Not particularly, but if his presence causes more people, especially young people, to see the play that is a good thing.

Nigel Shawn Williams is excellent as usual.  His character Brown is a black man proud not to share the knee-jerk responses that others presume black people have.  “I think O.J. was guilty” is one of his first lines.  Despite the structured hatred that Lawson speaks of, Williams shows that he and Lawson have a relationship as buddies and treat each other as equals.  What unites them as buddies, however, is their shared misogyny. 

Cara Ricketts’ Susan turns out to be the most mysterious character in the play.  She is mostly silent when Lawson and Brown interrogate Strickland and she seems to give in to being ordered about by the two male lawyers without qualm.  Ricketts’ great gift is to let us see that Susan only “seems” to tolerate the colleagues patronizing behaviour.  Underneath her outwardly cool demeanour we can tell she is seething with hatred for Lawson and Brown as much as for Strickland. 

Matthew Edison does a fantastic job of making Strickland a complex, sympathetic character.  He seems to be a man overwhelmed by circumstances and genuinely bewildered why a woman he has slept with before would now accuse him of rape.  Edison makes Strickland’s weakness and confusion into signs to us of his possible innocence.  Even Strickland’s desire to confess appears not as a revelation of the truth but as wish to bring the process to an end.  Brown says that all people feel guilt, and Strickland may confess to one false accusation to expiate his guilt for other failings in the past.

Director Daniel Brooks has wisely not followed the model of the New York premiere and presents the plays in a single 100-minute long sweep without an intermission.  This allows the tension in the play to mount inexorably as we constantly have to re-evaluate the pieces of new evidence that come in about Strickland and the attitudes of the three lawyers towards that evidence and each other.  Mamet masterfully shifts the focus of the play from an inquiry into Strickland’s guilt to an inquiry into the form of guilt shared by the lawyers.  After the play is over, you find yourself still debating who, if any of the four, was right and who was wrong.

Debra Hanson’s costumes and abstract set are appropriately only in tones of black, white and grey.  Only the files of evidence are in colour.  Brooks cleverly uses Kimberly Purtell’s lighting to highlight important objects in the midst of the sudden blackouts which separate scenes. 

Though the play may have Race as its title, it deals just as much with sexism and prejudice for and against the rich and poor.  In a trial what counts is not the truth but the perception of truth.  What worries Mamet is that race, gender and status so skew our perceptions that real communication between people is impossible and truth, if it exists, can’t be known.  Race is a powerful play that asks questions people must confront in others and within themselves.

              

©Christopher Hoile

Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.

Photo: Jason Priestley, Cara Ricketts and Nigel Shawn Williams. ©2013 David Hou.

For tickets, visit www.canadianstage.com.