The Downward Spiral of David Mamet

He's America's most influential playwright. But his new play shows how far wrong he's gone

By Richard Zoglin Monday, Jan. 11, 2010
    • Sara Krulwich / The New York Times / Redux

    Spade, Washington and Grier in the Broadway production of Race

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    The turning point for Mamet's theater work, it now appears, was Oleanna, his 1992 play in which a college professor's patronizing efforts to help a female student lead to an unjust charge of sexual harassment. Though the staccato dialogue was Mametspeak at its purest, a political agenda drove the characters in a way it never had any of Mamet's previous slimy, but at least self-directed, small-time crooks or real estate sharpies.

    Yet Oleanna seemed to grow out of the authentic passions of a particular time (just after the Clarence Thomas hearings), when sexual harassment and political correctness were ripe issues. Race, by contrast, seems like a relic of another era. The advent of Barack Obama may not have invalidated Mamet's cynical view of race relations, but it has made it seem shockingly glib and opportunistic. "This isn't about sex. It's about race," goes the exchange that brings down the curtain in one scene. "What's the difference?" Make sense of that line, and you just might be able to make sense of where the most important American playwright of his generation has gone wrong. Good luck.

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