Race review, Hampstead Theatre

Hold your seats folks, David Mamet's about to take you on a gripping, clever and brilliantly scripted 90 minutes of pure drama in which the play is the star. Race, set in a lawyers' office, centres on a charge of rape brought against a rich white man, Charles Strickland, by a young black woman with whom he has previously had consensual sex. Did he, on that particular night, rip her sequinned dress, call her a 'little nigger bitch' and rape her? He says he didn't, but as the nature of the relationship between oppressor and oppressed becomes the focus of the debate, he is confronted by what his behaviour across the years has represented, and starts to believe he is effectively guilty. Of course, he might be...

The four characters in Mamet's play are so finely tuned that they are strings of the same instrument, building to a glorious crescendo in which so many rehearsed truths about race have been shaken out, inspected and interrogated that we don't know what to believe. The words of Jack Lawson, the white half of the legal team representing the fat cat, become a metaphor for all difficult debates: there are no facts in a court case, only two fictions. Which fiction should we believe?

Jasper Britton as Lawson is mesmerising as he makes intellectual leaps that keep the arguments moving and Clarke Peters as his partner Henry Brown is wonderfully understated, standing back and taking full measure of all the players. Charles Daish as Strickland is physically a bit Clinton-like, which puts an interesting spin on the arguments in relation to a young woman in his pay. The surprise of the night is Nina Toussaint White for whom this is a theatrical debut. She has a tricky role to play as Susan, the black Harvard graduate employed by Lawson. She got her job despite lying on her application. Why: and can she be trusted? When, in a mesmerising final outpouring, she pushes Lawson on why he employed her, he is more surprised than us by the answer.

In conclusion: This is courtroom drama with the audience as jury. When feelings, status and emotion are part of the framework under scrutiny, every truth must be respected, and innocent actions have double meanings. Terry Johnson's direction ensures we barely draw breath, and while the skew is US-centric, there is plenty to chew on.

References
Hampstead Theatre, Tickets

Hampstead Theatre is on Eton Avenue, Swiss Cottage, London NW3 3EU.   Production ends 29 June