Kansas Jonny Goes To The Theater

Even though I live in the theater capital of the world, I don't go very often. More of a movie guy myself. But by some odd twist, I went to two shows this week, one Broadway and one off. Quality stuff, thankfully.

Race by David Mamet

Race is playing at the Ethel Barrymore Theater in the heart of the Broadway district, a neighborhood Mr. Mamet is very comfortable in. The show stars James Spader, David Allen Grier, Kerry Washington and Richard Thomas, a bunch of people I'd heard of but not paid any attention to. I literally can't think of anything I've seen after In Living Color with any of them in it.

The show is about a super-rich white guy who is accused of raping a black woman and goes to the law office of Spader and Grier, who employ Washington as a young lawyer. As Mamet is wont to do, they get right to the point, telling Thomas' preening billionaire that they aren't trying his guilt or innocence, they're trying perception, and he starts losing as soon as he's accused. The difference between race and sex is questioned a number of times, and in this legal setting the point is hard to ignore: rape and racism are hard to talk your way out of.

So it's no surprise when the second accusation gets layered onto the first in short order, which makes the story that much harder to unwind, and gives Mamet an excuse to use America's dirtiest word, more or less in context. The whole thing is obviously designed to make the audience deal with basic questions of the racial/social contract: is it okay if a white guy says nigger if it's part of a quote? If you start a business with a black partner, does that automatically mean you've washed off the residue of racial suspicion that all white people carry with them whenever they encounter minorities?

It did have it's intended effect, to some extent. But more than knocking the wind out of everyone, it made room for the audience to exhale from all the expectation. It's David Mamet, the play is called Race, of course the white guy's going to say a bunch of inappropriate shit.

And that is the play's strength. He pokes a stick in most of the sensitive spots, using the set up of three lawyers talking through a case to examine a laundry list of possible reactions from a fictional jury of us, the American public. He does a good job of sticking to reliable, middle of the road racial uncertainty, sparing us another tired examination of racial extremists on either side. Very few Americans are trying to re-integrate the school system, but there is still enough social segregation that just being honest about the subject is enough to seem like some kind of radical.

If I can say anything substantive about the show, it's that the problem has been diagnosed and now it's time to start talking solutions. The problems Mamet wanted to comment on were eloquently discussed and seamlessly woven into an interesting story. It's an enjoyable evening in the theater, but it isn't moving the conversation about race forward for anyone who's been paying attention for the last twenty years.

Like Al Pacino in the early Mamet classic Glengarry Glen Ross, James Spader stands out in Race as the successful, smart and sharp-tongued Man That Every Man Wants To Be. He's by far the strongest performer, and it's a good thing because he's got most of the cringe-worthy lines. He handles questions of race with an 'of course people are racist' kind of breeziness that is really refreshing. His philosophy doesn't have much to do with race, it revolves around our inherent selfishness, but he doesn't hesitate to apply it to racial perception. More than anything else, we all want to protect what we have, whether it's people or things. That kind of cold-hearted world view works best when it's treated like a given, and Spader pulls it off.

David Allen Grier wasn't bad, but he's too much of a face actor for me. Too many overdone expressions to not mention them. Washington and Thomas were good, but didn't do anything I didn't expect. Solid performances of course, but this is Broadway. I didn't give the usher a standing ovation for finding my seat, right?


Heavy Like The Weight Of A Flame by James Gabriel and R. Ernie Silva

Heavy is a show that I'm more than a little bit involved with: Silva, the co-writer and one-man in the one-man show, is staying in my spare bedroom while he's performing the show in New York. Silva has been a close personal friend of mine since I was 19 years old, so I've heard the stories that make up the show, and of course I want to like it. That said, I saw the show for the sixth and seventh times this weekend, it's that good.

The show is more akin to John Leguizamo's Freak than anything else I can think of, with Silva transitioning between speaking directly to the audience in first person and performing scenes between a variety of characters and himself through the years. He starts in Brooklyn in the 70's and 80's, a place he describes as 'orange', a place that was so good no one ever left.

But for all that was good about it, Silva reminds the audience that by the time he was out of high school he had lost his father, two brothers and seven friends to the ravages of gunfire, heroin and AIDS. In the most moving scene in the show, a very young Silva answers the phone when an upstate correctional facility calls to tell the next of kin that one of his brothers has died while in jail of AIDS he contracted from a dirty heroin needle. This is a true story, it was Silva's duty to tell his mother she'd lost another one of her children, and it is told with a kind of emotional honesty in the writing and acting that is incredibly powerful. When he packs his guitar into a case and leaves New York for the first time in his short life, you have no doubt why.

But this is also where the show becomes something unique. There are a million one-man shows, independent films and over-written novels about someone's tough childhood, but Silva's a hard guy to keep down. He travels across the midwest, earning a meal where he can, taking one when he has to. He practices his guitar, makes some odd new friends and waits for an answer to a question he can't quite define.

And he battles his demons, of course, seeing his personal mythology through to it's lowest point. I could get into the details of the storyline, but they won't make much sense out of context. What I can say is that, out of the very particular details of a life that wasn't supposed to matter, Silva has crafted a piece that every creative person, everyone who grew up somewhere that couldn't contain them, can relate to. It's an underdog story for cynics who want to believe, and it works.

In the end, as Silva walks off into the sunrise, it isn't to a big money job, he isn't saved by a girl and he's not necessarily suggesting that what works for him will work for you. He stays focused on the task at hand, becoming comfortable with the things that define him, but the path of the show that gets us there is so clear it's hard not to recognize your own experience in it.

How do you call a one-man show uplifting without sounding like an idiot? How do you write anything about realizing the power of your own voice through the theater without stabbing yourself for being soooo corny? I don't know, but somehow Silva and Gabriel pulled it off.