J.T. Rogers' new play of interlocking monologues inadvertently argues the case that white supremacists have been making for years, which is that they are now the oppressed ethnicity. By reducing two of his three characters to cardboard cutouts, the playwright does just what white supremacists claim liberals do to them, even if he does it artfully with nice language.
Rogers treats us to a Southern former homecoming queen married to a failed athlete who proclaims "We were here first" and a lawyer who swings around his golf club in his office and discourses on the importance of French cuffs. Only the third character, Alan, a professor pondering the history of Peter Stuyvesant, feels observed, with idiosyncratic human thought patterns. My guess is Rogers knows more professors than bigoted Southern housewives or narrow-minded white-shoe lawyers. Still, a play called White People ought to have more than one real person in it.
Despite some retrofitted lines in which the characters bitterly acknowledge the post-racial era now upon us, this play's binary us-them approach to race feels dated. That Mara Lynn — played sympathetically with wide-eyed befuddlement over a strained Southern accent by Rebecca Brooksher — feels racist anger at the Indian specialist who might be able to help her disabled son doesn't even make emotional sense here. More compelling are her descriptions of the cracks in her marriage. These have nothing to do with race, but they feel human and poignant.
John Dossett's lawyer, Martin, has apparently moved to St. Louis from Brooklyn partly to make his family safer. He's likable and funny as he complains about the poor grammar of some of his black staff. However, his assertion that "I be doing" is a shibboleth keeping people down is funny but untrue — rap music, anyone? An awful incident involving a son turned white supremacist seems intended to connect to the move and to Martin's elitist ideas, but it's such a strain that even the suave and appealing Dossett can't convince us that Martin's breach with his son is anything other than a sad generation gap.
Michael Shulman's professor has charm and interest, and Shulman brings boyish intensity to Alan's intelligent, circuitous rants. Alan admires Peter Stuyvesant's certainty and faith even as he deplores his bigotry. He fixates on a female black student who challenges and delights him with her inquiring mind, and he daydreams about yelling profanities at the students who tune out during class. All of these traits create a portrait of a man struggling to come to terms with life in the modern world, and he draws us in. Alan's story fascinates, even though an implausible and sensational incident, a violent attack that has prompted his woolgathering, is tacked onto it near the play's end.
Despite some intelligent writing and good acting, White People needs to be less black and white.
Presented by Starry Night Entertainment at Atlantic Stage 2, 330 W. 16th St., NYC. Feb. 3-22. Mon., Tue., Thu.-Sat., 8 p.m.; Sat. and Sun., 3 p.m. (212) 279-4200 or www.ticketcentral.com. Casting by Carrie Gardner.