Admit it: You cringe every time a radio station plays the watered down “Forget You” version of Cee Lo Green’s catchy tune or TV censors bleep out the best parts of Deadliest Catch. Good thing live theater isn’t bound by the same language restrictions or poor playwright David Mamet would be fucked.
Most of Mamet’s theatrical works are chock full of four-letter words and graphic sexuality, and his 2009 effort Race, which will make its regional debut at iTheatre Collaborative, is no exception.
The show chronicles the trial of a white man arrested for raping a black woman, with three lawyers – one white, two black – working for the defense. Profanity provides instant shock value, but Mamet’s revelations about race politics are even more startling. “It is a play about lies,” he wrote in a New York Times article advertising the original production. “Race, like sex, is a subject on which it is near impossible to tell the truth.”
Nov. 4-6, 8 p.m.; Nov. 10-12; Nov. 18-19, 2011
