David Mamet's Race

As usual, David Mamet takes on a hot-button issue and pulls no punches with his hard-hitting and thought-provoking dramatic style. Race centers around a legal team at a top firm that has been assigned to defend a white client accused of raping a black woman. The audience sits in as the attorneys discuss the case and in the process reveal painful truths about modern race and gender relations as well as the legal profession's cynical tendency to manipulate perceptions to gain the advantage. Mamet's trademark verbal pyrotechnics, and a plot that's a many-layered crime puzzle, gets the Chicago stage treatment from director Chuck Smith.