Clybourne Park

According to 2011 study by the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, Chicago is America's most segregated city. Or, as legendary columnist Mike Royko put it, you could always tell what neighborhood you were in by the food, the language, or "by whether a stranger hit you in the head with a rock." I read this info in an essay penned by Northwestern professor Bill Savage in an essay on Bruce Norris' play Clybourne Park, set in Chicago, which just opened on Broadway. It dares to go into the nest of vipers that is the conversation on race.

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize last year, the play returns its entire cast from the Steppenwolf Theater production of 2010. While some dramaturgical creaks are too plainly evident, I found the play to be lively and scathing, and all-too true about what's going on with race in this country. Just when you think we're post-racial, with a black man in the White House, comes along something that knocks you back on your heels, like the Trayvon Martin shooting or the outrage by a shocking number of people that a beloved character in The Hunger Games was played by a black child.

Clybourne Park takes Lorraine Hansberry's 1959 classic, A Raisin in the Sun and gives it expanded life. In that play, a black family, bestowed with a sizable insurance check, buys a house in all-white neighborhood. A representative of the white community, a fictional neighborhood called Clybourne Park, tries to buy them out, lest the property values plummet. That character, Karl Lindner, appears in Norris' production, just a few hours after his appearance in Hansberry's work.

The setting is the house itself, a modest bungalow in a working-class neighborhood of German and Irish. The first act is in 1959, and the Stollers, Russ and Bev, are packing up to move. The opening moments are a kind of Father Knows Best parody, as the couple gently bicker over the derivation of the word Neapolitan and the capital of Mongolia (Ulan Bator, which you will never forget after seeing this play). A neighbor and minister, Jim, stops by, full of Eisenhower-era exclamations like Jiminy Cricket and Holy Toledo.

It slowly becomes apparent that the Stollers have endured some kind of tragedy--their son, a Korean war vet who was accused of killing civilians, hung himself. But before that can be fully developed, Karl appears, with shocking news--the family that Russ and Bev have sold to are "colored."

The ensuing drama has Karl trying to convince Russ to back out of the sale. What he couldn't do with the Youngers in Hansberry's play, he spells out to Bev what will happen if a black family moves in--one family will leave, then another, and property values will drop precipitously. It's all economics, really--no aspersions are cast on black people, except for Jim's statement that the black church uses tambourines. Later in the play, de Tocqueville will be quoted: "The history of America is the history of private property."

The Stollers' black maid, Francine, will be dragged patronizingly into the conversation, as Jim asks her if she would like to live in a neighborhood like Clybourne Park. Her husband, Albert, cuts through the nonsense and clarifies--what would it be like to live next to white folks. Bev sees Francine as a girlfriend, but Francine sees this only as a job, and is trying to get through her last two days of employment unscathed.

The second act is set 50 years later. The same actors play different characters, but strategically so. The house is now dilapidated, but a white couple, Steve and Lindsey, have bought it, intending to tear it down and build a new structure. But their new house would be taller than the zoning allows, and the neighborhood association, represented by Tom, with black neighbors Kevin and Lena, have petitioned to stop them. Everyone sits peaceably, going over the law, and tensions slowly mount.

Steve starts to think that Lena objects because they are white, and we are forced to come to a riddle: is white gentrification of a black neighborhood the same as integration was 50 years ago? Of course, gentrification actually raises property values, but Lena, who is named after her great-aunt, the woman that bought the house 50 years ago, sees the historic value of keeping the homes as they were. When Steve starts to feel he is being racially singled out, the discussion degenerates into an exchange of tasteless jokes, and everyone in the room gets offended.

In a simultaneously clever and clumsy way, Norris points out how far and how little we have come. The acts parallel each other--each starts at three o'clock on a Saturday afternoon and end just after the church bells strike four, each has a discussion of world capitals, and each share a few lines that take on different meaning: "you can't live in a principle" is one, and another, hilariously, is "Do you ski?" But a play that relies on an exchange of jokes is a bit clunky, though one of them, "Why is a white woman like a tampon?" makes the house inhale with shock.

There is also, literally, buried baggage in the backyard (it reminded me of the Sam Shepard play, Buried Child) and an ending that attempts to be poignant, but instead seems to elude the point.

The cast is mostly on target. Frank Wood, as Russ, dominates the first act, with a festering anger (he will play the workman who discovers the trunk in Act II). Jeremy Shamos, who plays Karl and Steve, has the most work to do, and he shines, playing  both the unctuous nervous white man in the first act and the easily offended white man in the second. Christina Kirke, as Bev and Kathy, a lawyer in the second act, has more mixed results. She is difficult to get used to in the beginning, as a kind of intense June Cleaver, but in the second act she has a number of laugh-lines, playing a woman who has no idea how to take the temperature of a room. As the black couple, Crystal A. Dickinson is terrific as Francine/Lena--it's almost as if Lena is the outlet for Francine's quiet rage, while Damon Gupton is solid as Albert/Kevin. Annie Parisse plays Lindsey in the second act and Karl's deaf wife Betsy in the first. She has the line that is the most problematic in the whole play, when she says, "Half of my friends are black." That's kind of a cliche of white liberal guilt, but does get quite a laugh. Finally, Brendan Griffin is capable as Jim/Tom.

The direction, by Pam McKinnon, is excellent, although I did find much of the second act stagnant, as the characters are seated as if at a panel ready to answer the audience's questions, which makes for some awkwardness.

Clybourne Park has considerable merits, even if the seams show. White flight and gentrification are issues that still resonate in the American consciousness, and if politics and religion are topics that one shouldn't discuss, race needs to be added to them.