Theater Review: Clybourne Park

Pictured L-R: Frank Wood, Annie Parisse, Christina Kirk, Jeremy Shamos, Damon Gupton, and Crystal A. Dickinson. Photo credit: Nathan Johnson.

Racial Relations: Have Things Changed All That Much Over the Years?
By Lauren Yarger
A couple hopes to buy a home in which to raise their child, but meets with opposition because they are a different race from the rest of the neighborhood. In 1959 or 2009 Clybourne Park, the story is the same, but the families are different.

That's the twist in Bruce Norris' Pulitzer-Prize winning play getting a limited Broadway run, following successful Off-Broadway, London and and Los Angeles engagements. A link to Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Son solidifies the statement that while some things might have changed since the civil rights era, we still have a ways to go. The play premiered at Playwrights Horizons in 2010, just two years after the first African-American was elected president. It premiered on Broadway in 2012 just weeks after the Trayvon Martin furor.

In 1959, the owners of the home in question are white: Ditsy Bev (Christina Kirk) is packing up the recently sold home with the help of domestic helper francine (Crystal A. Dickinson). She's worried about the moodiness of husband Russ (a terrifically versatile Frank Wood) who still is depressed about the death of their war-veteran son who committed suicide upsatrs a couple of years before. She asks their pastor, Jim (Brendan Griffin), to stop by to offer some advice, but Russ isn't interested. He also doesn't care that his neighbor, Karl, is concerned that the house has been sold to a black family. Karl wonders what the change will mean for the neighborhood, especially now that he and his deaf wife Betsy (Annie Parisse) are expecting a child and were hoping to be able to raise it right there in Clybourne Park. (There is a subtle humor in how Bev tries to overcompensate to show she is not put off by Betsy's disability as ineffectively as she does to show she is not put off by Francine's race).

Tempers flare, and despite the best efforts of Francine and her husband, Albert (Damon Gupton) to throw water on the tensions, the race issue is too hot to smother.

Flip to 2009. The once painstakingly cared-for home now is a wreck, covered with graffiti (Daniel Ostling's sets and Ilona Somogyi's costumes keep us in the right periods). The new owners, Lindsey and Steve (Parisse and Shamos) are expecting and hoping to just about demolish the place and put up a new home as part of the gentrification taking place as white families look for nice places close to the city to raise a family. they meet at the house to iron out last-minute details of the contract with sellers Kevin and Lena (Gupton and Dickinson) and their attorneys: Tom (Griffin) for the sellers and Kathy (Kirk), a distant relative of the original owners. Worker Dan (Wood) checks in from time to time as construction takes place outside, but Lena isn't sure the couple appreciates the history of the house or the neighborhood where her aunt was the first African-American to live in the neighborhood. In expressing herself, she trips off another powder keg of racial tension.

Director Pam McKinnon's tight direction keeps the action moving. She guides strong performances -- all the actors make startling transitions between the characters they play in each act. While the play itself makes good use of humor and character trait to bring up thought-provoking questions, some of the dialogue seems contrived as a mechanism to help the playwright do this. Would the preacher really insist on bringing the maid and her husband into the discussion? Would Karl really come back for more after leaving in a huff? Would Steve really tell that off-color joke? Probably not, but there's reality enough in the issues being discussed.

Clybourne Park runs through July 8 at the Walter Kerr Theatre, 219 West 48th St., NYC. Discounted tickets are available by clicking here.

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