Cake or Death's Groovy News

[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.

[from Killing the Buddah]

“As the progeny of a hippie college professor/Episcopal priest who dropped acid with Timothy Leary, I received an admittedly eclectic religious education. How many nine year olds can recite the Lord’s Prayer along with the lyrics to “The Vatican Rag” and “Plastic Jesus?” While other kids were watching the Three Stooges and other classic American fare, my tastes drew me across the pond where I got hooked on Monty Python’s Flying Circus and The Goodies.

My Pythonesque journey took me to the religious universes of Lenny Bruce and George Carlin, two comedians who helped me to deconstruct the world of organized religion during that period when my home life detonated. When I first started writing satire, I got turned on to the religious rants of Bill Hicks, an American comic with a definite British sensibility. By the time I caught Eddie Izzard’s HBO performance Dressed to Kill (1999), I had become a full-blown comedy junkie, devouring the likes of Jonathan Swift, Richard Pryor, P.J. O’Rourke, Molly Ivins, and Steve Allen.

Given how much Izzard’s astute observations of religion and politics helped inform my own development as a satirist, I eagerly picked up a copy of the Eddie Izzard documentary Believe, thinking I might glean some insights as to the formation of his religious beliefs. At the very least, I was hoping this surrealist might explore how he inhabited the body of satirist Lenny Bruce during a 1999 limited run production of Julian Barry’s 1971 play Lenny…”

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[thanks Barb!]

>> VIDEO LINK HERE

[from NYPost.com]

It was a rocky start for noted British cross-dressing comic Eddie Izzard and former “24” president Dennis Haysbert, who have taken over the leads in David Mamet’s “Race” on Broadway. At Monday night’s performance, a spy reports the veteran actors “seemed unsteady and most forgetful of their lines,” but added: “Doing any Mamet play is no easy task and the dialogue is unwieldy. It was their first performance, hopefully things will improve as they get into the roles.” A rep for the show could not be reached.

[from broadway.com]

British stand-up Eddie Izzard first made a splash on this side of the pond with his 1998 HBO special Dress to Kill, which introduced America to Izzard’s outrageous, rambling, self-deprecating (and occasionally cross-dressing) Monty Python-esque style. Since then, Izzard has juggled comedy gigs in huge arenas, film (My Super Ex-Girlfriend, Ocean’s Twelve, Mystery Men, Prince Caspian), TV (the cult hit The Riches opposite Minnie Driver) and a Tony-nominated performance as the father of a disabled child in A Day in the Death of Joe Egg. Now the multitalented Izzard is returning to Broadway for a summer run as lawyer Jack Lawson in David Mamet’s Race. Izzard first tackled Mamet in the original London production of The Cryptogram, and his attention to language makes him an ideal match for a play filled with fast and clever banter on a serious subject. Just before his first performance at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre, we checked in with Izzard about his affinity for lawyer-speak, his future political career and the ongoing World Cup.

How does it feel to return to Broadway?
It’s good to be back. It’s a slightly different way of coming in, in that it’s just after the Tonys and all that stuff, but it’s a good role to come for.

A lot of people felt you deserved a Tony for [the 2003 revival of] A Day in the Death of Joe Egg.
I won the Drama Desk that year, and then [Brian Dennehy] won the Tony [for Long Day’s Journey Into Night]. Obviously the Tony gets more press, but there’s politics involved and whatever. It gave me somewhere to go even if I didn’t win. I was very happy with what I did with that role. In the end me, Stanley Tucci, and Philip Seymour Hoffman all got nominated but didn’t win, so I thought, “Well, this is still a pretty good group to be in.”

Did you decide to return to Broadway specifically for this piece?
Yes. The offer came in and I’m playing a lawyer in a play that’s very interesting, with all these racial politics. I’ve just come off the UK elections because I’m standing for election [for Mayor of London or Member of European Parliament] in 10 years in the UK so I was very involved in campaigning [for Britain’s Labour Party]. A lot of lawyers end up going into politics because of the precision of the speech, so I found that very interesting training.

What was your campaigning experience like?
They shove cameras in your face everywhere you go, and say, “Why are you here? Why are you supporting the Labour Party and where do you feel the future of things is going to go?” You have to be very precise, and that’s the same in law.

As a politician, what are you hoping to achieve?
One of the problems in politics is vision. If you’re just there administrating, that really isn’t what people want. They want a direction in which you’re heading. I’m a pretty good communicator and good at setting up systems that haven’t existed before. I don’t want to leave it to the bleeding-head right wingers!

Would political office mean the end of your acting career?
I’ll have to put everything into deep hibernation. But I could go up for election, then after four years everyone’ll say, “We don’t want to see him again” and then pick [acting] back up.

What’s it like to work with David Mamet? He has a reputation for telling actors that everything they need to know is already in the script.
He does give stage direction within the way he writes, which actually makes things easier. When you get Shakespeare you think, “Well, which way am I supposed to do this? What was he actually meaning?” With [Mamet] the guy is actually there in front of you. He is very much saying, “Just let the play serve you.”

You’re best known as a stand-up comedian, but this is a very serious role.
Drama is my first love.When I first started as an actor, that’s all I was aiming for. I sort of went in this big curvy direction with comedy, but since around 1993 I’ve been, in a schizophrenic way, developing comedy and drama separately—and it confuses the hell out of agents!

Why is race an important subject matter to investigate?
Racism is a bizarre thing. We’ve had wars about race, and apartheid, and wars over [religion]. Race shouldn’t make any difference whatsoever. If we were attacked by monsters from outer space or something I’m sure everyone would drop the whole race thing and come together very quickly and say, “Who the hell are these bloody monsters?” [Laughs.] It confuses me because I went to a boarding school where there were loads of different skin colors. It’s a fascinating subject, but one that would be great if it could go away.

Is there any truth to the rumors about a possible film version of The Riches [in which Izzard and Minnie Driver played con artists who move to suburbia]?
There are a million hoops to get through and [in this economy] the idea of scaring up money for an independent film got really tricky. It’s still a possibility. There were ideas going around but no actual script. Even if we picked up with the family a few years down the line, we could pick up new fans and keep the old ones.

You had a memorable scene as Mr. Kite in the 2007 Beatles musical Across the Universe. Any interest in doing a musical for your next Broadway gig?
Not really a big Broadway musical. I might do something with music—my mother was a singer—but that’s not my next project. It’s there in the back of my mind, but I think it’d take months of training before I could do anything.

You grew up playing soccer. Are you still a big fan?
I’m a fan as long as we win.

What’s it like spending World Cup season in a country where the sport isn’t hugely popular?
I want America to understand what world football can do. In America, soccer is seen as a middle class game, but it’s really working class—kids kick around cans in the dusty streets in South America and Africa. It’s the whole world coming together and meeting and challenging each other, like the Olympics but more simple. [Soccer] is one of the few sports where players aren’t genetically disposed—which is not an American trait because Americans are all about meritocracy and “Anyone can do whatever they want, and anyone can be president” and so on. With basketball, if you’re not tall, you’re not playing, and for [American] football you need to be huge. You can be tall, wide, small or thin and be good at soccer.

Speaking of sports, last year you ran 43 marathons for the charity Sports Relief. Sounds pretty intense.
That’s the “action transvestite” for you. The Sports Relief people in the UK ask celebrities to do challenges, and they usually want it to be non-sporty people because it’s more of an “Oh my god, that person’s doing that” idea. I told them I’d do it and I don’t think they believed me. Once I did 15 marathons, it got easier. It’s that “stay the course, keep fighting” thing. I’m quite good at setting up things and doing them as long as I’m motivated. If I’m not motivated, I won’t get out of bed.