Race Critics’ Reviews
From the writer of Glengarry Glen Ross, Race involves a firm made up of three lawyers, two black and one white, that is offered the chance to defend a white man charged with a crime against a black young woman.
From the writer of Glengarry Glen Ross, Race involves a firm made up of three lawyers, two black and one white, that is offered the chance to defend a white man charged with a crime against a black young woman.
What Is Race About?
Race is about three lawyers—two partners, one African-American, one white, and their young, African-American law clerk—who are deciding whether or not to take the case of wealthy white man accused of raping an African-American woman. The play, like the case, is not open and shut. Shame, guilt, class, sex, lies and, of course, race, are all provocatively stirred together in this fast-paced show that will probably leave theatergoers dissecting and discussing it long after the curtain goes down. As the playwright wrote in a recent essay about his work, “Race, like sex, is a subject on which it is near impossible to tell the truth.” Audience members will undoubtedly bring their own set of judgments and preconceptions into this work that delves into a most complicated and fraught subject.
""A high-voltage melodrama that is unafraid to raise painful questions while dispensing prickly ideas and provocative dialogue amid steady suspense. The play is full of wry jokes, epigrammatic jolts, and acrid, even cheeky provocations, which, depending on the extent of your guilt feelings, can be taken as deserved flagellation or perfervid overstatement.""
Bloomberg News
John Simon
""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.""
The New York Times
Ben Brantley
""Briskly entertaining. It is indeed a world full of misunderstandings, and Race offers an absorbing glimpse.""
USA Today
Elysa Gardner