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[from hollywood.com]

The British comic took over the lead role in the production, previously played by James Spader, last month (21Jun10).

Broadway’s notoriously tough critics panned his performance on his opening night for forgetting his lines and stumbling through his first show.

But Izzard doesn’t think he deserves the harsh comments he received – because he only had three weeks of rehearsals and one week of previews before the press weighed in on his performance.

He tells New York Magazine, “What do they expect? I came in very fast. Do they think that no one ever gets a line wrong on Broadway, ever? There should come and try and do it for a weekend.”

But Izzard is refusing to let the bad reviews get him down – he’s using them as motivation to perfect his lines and redeem himself.

He says: “I’m a determined little bugger.”

[from nypost.com]

Wen David Mamet’s play “Race” opened on Broadway in December, I called it a “bewildering muddle” that “sinks into absurdity.”

What a difference a new cast can make.

The brash plot still feels gratuitously provocative and defies plausibility, but the show — directed by Mamet himself — is now less in our face, more layered. And for that we can thank British actor Eddie Izzard and US President (well, on TV’s “24” at least) Dennis Haysbert, who have just stepped in for James Spader and David Alan Grier, respectively.

Mamet throws out one taunt after another as a rich white man (Richard Thomas) asks a pair of lawyers (Izzard, Haysbert) to defend him in a rape case involving a black woman.

The first time around, this premise felt like a mere pretext for a series of incendiary aphorisms designed to provoke uncomfortable laughs. Spader was particularly fun as he delivered a tour de force of manipulative sleaze, while Grier stayed on the surface, a glibly obnoxious second banana. Both came across like fast-talking hustlers.

The verbal jousting is played down now. Izzard’s attorney comes across as much nicer — with an undercurrent of passive-aggression — while Haysbert exudes an authority that Grier sorely missed. This levels the playing field between them — and since their young associate (Afton C. Williamson, replacing Kerry Washington) boasts increased cunning, the power plays that link the three have gained
in intricacy.

Adding another layer is Thomas, the original cast’s sole survivor. He’s grown in strength, and his character now sports a fascinating mix of arrogance and prideful shame, like a Kennedy apologizing for a wrong deed out of a sense of noblesse oblige.

“Race” is still a clunky play, but it’s become a lot more interesting to watch.

[from newjerseynewsroom.com]

David Mamet’s cool comedy on a hot topic, “Race” received short shrift from some of my colleagues when it bowed on Broadway last December.

But here we are in July and “Race” keeps on running at the Barrymore, where three fresh actors have taken over for James Spader, David Alan Grier and Kerry Washington.

Best known as the President on TV’s “24” series, Dennis Haysbert neatly teams up with Eddie Izzard, the British comedian-actor-marathoner, as two slick law partners dealing with a tricky client who swears he did not rape a certain young woman in a size 2 red-sequin dress. Afton C. Williamson now portrays the legal eagles’ newly-hired associate who makes several mistakes that later prove to be not so accidental.
Original cast member Richard Thomas remains with the production as the rich guy wriggling on the hot seat of public opinion.

American perceptions on race from black and white viewpoints are raised for sardonic laughs by Mamet in this slim though sharp comedy. It’s not Mamet’s greatest play, but it’s a smart, engrossing 90 minutes sure to make viewers shake or nod their heads in recognition at some of the nasty truths he exposes.

“Race” gets off to a very fast start and a recent performance saw the new actors struggle a bit to keep up with Mamet’s swift exposition of the situation. But after a tentative beginning, they settle into a confident groove and the comedy soon rocks the house with significant laughter.

Under Mamet’s direction, Haysbert and Izzard take a slightly more realistic approach to the material than their predecessors, so the play’s bleak message resonates with greater force.

Haysbert possesses a soft voice and a grave, authoritative manner. Izzard wears a goatee and a prickly sense of discomfort. Williamson invests the cipher in the pencil skirt with considerable poise. Thomas’ multi-layered portrait of a wounded billionaire has acquired some oily tints that make his character even richer than before.

“Race” continues its open-end run at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre, 243 W. 47th St., New York. Call (212) 239-6200 or visit www.broadwaysbestshows.com.

[from NY Magazine]

While he tries to embody Jack Lawson—a macho, rather soulless lawyer endeavoring to defend a rich white man who almost certainly raped a black woman, in David Mamet’s Race on Broadway—Eddie Izzard needs to maintain, as he calls it, “boy mode.” Which means the dresses and heels are on hiatus. Boy mode was not necessary during his stand-up tour in Canada, which he concluded the day before the start of Race rehearsals. “I spent the first half of the tour in boy mode, and then I swapped to girl mode.” Izzard’s “girl off, girl on” existence, he clarifies, is “the inverse of drag.” (Izzard, who’s straight, is big on semantics.) “Drag is about costumers. I’m just trying to wear a dress. I’m a straight action-executive transvestite. Action is, ‘I’ll beat the crap out of you if you give me a hard time.’ Executive is, ‘I travel first class.’ That’s just the genetic gift I was given. When you’re born they go, ‘Okay, that one’s gay, that one’s straight, straight transvestite, bi, good at swimming, crap at swimming, good with hedgehogs, likes pictures, eats fish fingers.’?” He doubts that the dress-wearing mixes with playing Lawson. “You try to hug that character to you.”

At Angus McIndoe, Izzard munches on a chicken salad, which, he says, he shouldn’t be eating anyway. “I don’t need food. I think I’m not designed for it. I really have come to that conclusion. I’ve heard of people in the mountains who live on berries and stuff, and I think that’s what I’m supposed to do.” He is very girl off in a Savile Row suit. Izzard comes to Race as a replacement for James Spader, who does nothing if not play skeezy lawyers well. “People don’t necessarily see me that way,” Izzard concedes, “but my brain does work in a very logical, military way. I could have been that lawyer; I would have been happy to study that at university. I did accounting and financial management, in fact.” Reviews for Race came out July 1, and the critics weren’t as convinced. There are mentions of tentativeness and botched lines, almost certainly owed to Izzard’s having just three weeks of rehearsals and one week of previews. “What do they expect? I came in very fast. Do they think that no one ever gets a line wrong on Broadway, ever? They should come and try and do it for a weekend.”

But he’s sure he’ll get it. “I’m a determined bugger,” he says. “I’m a transvestite with a career, and I ran 43 marathons in 51 days.” He’s referring to a challenge he gave himself last September to run around the U.K. with only five weeks of training (still a bit more than he had for Race). “There’s no learning how to run, I don’t think,” he says. “There’s just deciding that you want to run. This”—he points to his head—“controls it all.” He ran to raise money for the charity Sport Relief. But the run was also a journey to places from childhood, including the home in Wales where his mother died of cancer when he was 6. That early loss is what Izzard thinks drove him to seek the love of an audience. Also on the itinerary was a facility where his father worked for British Petroleum.

“We grew up with BP,” Izzard says, rather wistfully. “They are an oil company and they are what they are, but I’ve had this relationship with them that’s a sort of rich uncle, because that’s sort of what they were to our family situation. BP transferred us from refinery to refinery.” Izzard finds it hard to suppress his affection for the company, even now. “It’s a calamitous thing,” he says, “but there’s a part of me that just wants BP to do good. I need to follow more closely, but my understanding is it’s a deep well. The top casing, which was subcontracted out, has blown up, and this is all due to relaxing in the laws that came from a Bush-Cheney administration, right? And they’ve never had a breach like this before … I want the problem to go away, and I want BP to get to a better place. And in the end, if blame has to be apportioned, it should go to the right people. All you hear is BP, BP, BP. In the end, the subcontractor, they’re going to go away scot-free and BP will be blamed for everything.” I mention that BP’s had 760 OSHA violations to Exxon’s 1. “Wow,” says Izzard, reconsidering. “Then they deserve the blame.”

If he sounds like a politician—sure with the narrative if not always the facts—it’s because he plans on being one. Earlier this year, Izzard campaigned for the Labour Party in 25 cities and towns. The timing is incidental, but he sees campaigning as good practice for playing a Mamet lawyer, and vice-versa. “I think people in law get into politics because of the precision of language and precision of thought,” he says. “If people are shoving cameras in your face and saying, ‘Why do you feel Gordon Brown said this?’ or ‘What does this mean for the economy?’ you try to get some ideas out that can grab some of their imaginations or make them think at least.” He’s thinking maybe mayor of London or representative to the European Union. “I’ve already told everyone I’m a transvestite, so that should immediately stop me from going into politics, but I don’t think so.”

[from Playbill]

Stand-up comedian and stage and screen actor Eddie Izzard, currently appearing on Broadway in David Mamet’s Race, sat down with AP Live June 29 to discuss the the play and the issues it dramatizes.

The wide-ranging, 20-minute interview covers working with co-star Dennis Haysbert, audience reactions to the play, racism in Izzard’s native England versus the United States, Izzard’s decision to discuss historical mass murderers and his own transvestitism in his standup, and his passion for running marathons.

Izzard received a Tony Award nomination for his work in the revival of A Day in the Death of Joe Egg. Other stage credits include Cryptogram and Edward II. He has appeared on screen in “Valkyrie,” “Ocean’s Twelve” and “Thirteen,” “The Cat’s Meow,” “Velvet Goldmine” and “The Avengers.”

…to whoever sent me the Eddie swag in the mail today. There was no note (that I saw) or return address or anything but thank you 🙂

[from The Hollywood Reporter]

Bottom Line: Thanks to its terrific new cast, David Mamet’s problematic legal drama is well worth a second look.
The new cast of David Mamet’s “Race” represents a perfect example of how to inject fresh life into a long-running Broadway show. Replacing original stars James Spader, the Tony-nominated David Alan Grier and Kerry Washington are Eddie Izzard, Dennis Haysbert and Washington’s understudy, Afton C. Williamson. The mesmerizing results demonstrate that this legal drama should prove catnip to actors in subsequent productions.

Upon second viewing, “Race” proves no less problematic or contrived in its depiction of the efforts of a racially mixed law team to defend a rich white man against charges of raping his black girlfriend. Although clearly meant to be an incendiary portrait of how racial attitudes affect all human interactions, the play’s ideas never coalesce in sufficiently thoughtful or meaningful fashion.

But there is no denying the playwright’s gifts for creating colorful characters and especially compellingly stylized dialogue, both of which are on ample display here.

As Jack Lawson, Spader was in fine, ripping form, but his performance was necessarily hampered by his character’s resemblance to Alan Shore, the ethically challenged lawyer he played so memorably in “The Practice” and the long-running “Boston Legal.”

Izzard has no such associations. The performer, still best known for his stand-up work, has been building an increasingly impressive resume of acting credentials through the years that has not garnered sufficient attention. Adopting a flawless American accent, he delivers a smooth, understated turn that beautifully conveys the character’s cagey, ruthless smarts.

Making his Broadway debut, Haysbert — best known for his President David Palmer on “24,” not to mention his ubiquitous Allstate Insurance commercials — is less overtly comical than the naturally funny Grier as the black partner. But his massive physical presence and deep bass voice give him natural stage presence, and he provides an air of quietly thoughtful menace that ratchets up the tension in fine fashion.

Williamson fulfills the demands of her role admirably, but like her predecessor, she is hampered by the playwright’s continued inability to create female characters who come across as anything other than one-dimensional and schematic.

Continuing in his pivotal if underwritten role as the sleazily racist defendant, the cast-against-type Richard Thomas, skillfully playing against his wholesome image, has only gotten better.

[from NY Times]

Eddie Izzard has the face of a fallen angel, of a rumpled cherub who grew up way too fast once he landed in hell. That face alone makes this British actor and comic a solid choice for the role of Jack Lawson, the Mephistophelean lawyer in “Race,” David Mamet’s terse moral fable of pride and prejudices at the Ethel Barrymore Theater. True, James Spader had played the part to near perfection when the show opened in December. But I had hopes that Mr. Izzard, a brilliant stand-up portraitist of human perversity, might give a jolt of shock therapy to an often glib and mechanical play.

Yet he is on deflatingly good behavior in this recently recast production, directed by Mr. Mamet, whose other new additions are Dennis Haysbert and Afton C. Williamson as Jack’s professional colleagues. (The ever-assured Richard Thomas remains as their affluent client, a white man accused of raping a black woman.) Mr. Izzard’s performance is smart and sensitive, but it generally feels more submissive than subversive. From the beginning he registers more as a self-deluding patsy than a super con man.

The patsy has always lurked in Jack’s smooth persona. (It’s a Mamet play, remember; somebody has to get suckered.) And the revelation of his susceptibility is for me, the most humanizing aspect of “Race,” in which the other three characters mostly register as movable points on a plot grid. Mr. Izzard has a self-questioning vulnerability from the get-go, though. He’s a take-down waiting to happen.

He also still seemed slightly unsure of his lines at the performance I attended, as did the booming-voiced Mr. Haysbert. The sustained locomotive surge of words rushing forward toward collision, a requisite for a Mamet production, was only rarely in evidence. That may change as these actors grow more familiar with their roles. As it is, one is too aware of an author pushing characters into place.

Ms. Williamson is an improvement on Kerry Washington, her predecessor as Susan, an attractive young woman with a murky agenda. The part could still use more varied inflection than it’s given here. In the one scene that flies, Jack and Susan go mano a mano alone.

Even more than Mr. Spader did, Mr. Izzard shows a sudden, raw eagerness to get it right with a person of another gender and skin color. A charge of fraught chemistry courses briefly onstage, giving new resonance to Jack’s first-act curtain line, in which he suggests that sexual and racial tensions are sometimes one and the same.