Synopsis "But you can’t live in a principle, can you? Gotta live in a house. And so do they. Not in this house they don’t" In 1959 Russ and Bev are selling their desirable two-bed at a knock-down price. This enables the first Black family to move into the neighbourhood, creating ripples of discontent amongst the cosy white urbanites of Clybourne Park. In 2009, the same property is being bought by Lindsey and Steve whose plans to raze the house and start again is met with a similar response. Are the issues festering beneath the floorboards actually the same fifty years on? Bruce Norris’ satirical play explores the fault line between race and property. Clybourne Park first opened at the Playwrights Horizons in New York in February 2010. His previous credits include The Pain and the Itch (Royal Court, 2007), The Infidel, Purple Heart and The Unmentionables.
American playwright Bruce Norris’ satirical racialist drama Clybourne Park – such a big hit at the Royal Court last year, and already named Best Play by the Evening Standard and the Critics’ Circle – does not seem such a big deal, after all, in its transfer to Wyndham’s.
Maybe it’s just one of those plays you don’t need to see a second time. Maybe it wasn’t really that funny first time around. Maybe there’s nobody famous in it. And the conceit of having a second act set fifty years later in the same 1959 Chicagoan bungalow is not all that innovative.
The dead Korean veteran whose parents are torn apart in the first act returns at the end of the play, to haunt premises appropriated by a black ghetto after the white “ruling party” checked out.
But similar social consequences have been addressed far more imaginatively, in parallel circumstances, by Tom Stoppard in Arcadia and Mike Leigh in It’s a Great Big Shame. The theme of geographical invasion is over-engineered: turns out, the black housing committee member is a great niece of the first act house maid.
There are two cast changes: Stuart McQuarrie, absolutely magnificent, is now the bereaved father of the first act and the embroiled workman of the second, while Stephen Campbell Moore makes a good job of replacing the more brilliantly funny Martin Freeman as the redneck Rotarian, though I note he says “a tad overweight” and “a tad unreasonable” in either act and this is surely a tad too much on the solecism front.
Olivier award-nominated Sophie Thompson swoops and dithers hilariously as a suburban gorgon and acidic bourgeoise, though she makes less differentiation between them than before. And Sam Spruell as the vicar, Sarah Goldberg as a deaf mute – butt of much uneasy laughter – and Lorna Brown and Lucian Msamati as a married “slave” couple who exact some sort of updated revenge, are all terrific.
But the play depends for take-off, finally, on some outrageous joke-spinning in the last quarter: and it may be the case that Clybourne Park is remembered, if at all, as the one where a black woman asked why a white woman was like a tampon, and got a reply I couldn’t possibly repeat on a family website.
Dominic Cooke’s direction is smart and sassy, and Robert Innes Hopkins’ design, beautifully lit by Paule Constable, is magically transformed from a place to live in to a place to fight over. But I’m not convinced the play is as good as I first thought it was: perhaps, at the Court, it was just a delightful surprise.
- Michael Coveney
NOTE: The following FOUR STAR review dates from 2 September 2010, and this production's premiere at the Royal Court
As in Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia, or Mike Leigh’s It’s a Great Big Shame!, American playwright Bruce Norris’ lacerating new comedy paints the present over the past in the same location and finds echoes and ironies in the passage of history between four walls.
It’s a stunningly well written and crafted history play, a worthy follow-up to Norris’ The Pain and the Itch with which Dominic Cooke so notably began his Royal Court regime three years ago.
And it detonates uncomfortably revealing racist jokes and paybacks across the decades as a once white housing community is invaded, fifty years later, by white middle-class home-seekers in a black ghetto on the same patch.
The first act in the Chicagoan bungalow on Clybourne Street in 1959 is an acrid suburban farce, a marriage torn apart by the death of a son in the Korean War, with neighbourly intrusions from the vicar, a racist Rotarian and his deaf wife and the bullish husband of the black housemaid.
Stand-out comic performances from Sophie Thompson as the truly desperate housewife and Martin Freeman as the glibly impervious Rotarian (“Tell me where to find a skiing negro”) no way trample over the excellent work of Steffan Rhodri as the shattered husband, Lorna Brown as the maid or Sarah Goldberg as the blonde, pregnant mute.
All find parallels in their updated counterparts, and there’s a link in the personnel on the contemporary housing committee in a property that is now a ghostly, run-down shadow of its former self.
It’s an artfully worked and strikingly abrasive drama, killingly funny and beautifully presented in Cooke’s production, Robert Innes-Hopkins’ design and Paule Constable’s lighting. Looks like a smash hit to me.
“What does a white woman and a tampon have in common?” goes the “killer joke” in Act II of Bruce Norris’s fascinating play that examines racial tensions in America, circa 1959 and 2009. This and other razor sharp jokes brought vividly to life the bubbling racism, which was direct and in your face during Act I, but kept deliberately brewing under the surface during Act II of Clybourne Park at the Wyndham’s theatre.
I found the play by turns hilarious, shocking and tension filled as it dissected racial tensions surrounding the sale of Russ and Bev’s home in white, middle class suburbia to a black couple. Underpinning this major event is the even bigger, more personal crisis the couple are going through. The emotional difficulty in coping with the anguish of their soldier son’s death.
This issue whilst not the main story, is nonetheless a key component of the story.
The play was set in Chicago, but considering the familiar issues explored, it could just as easily have been London or anywhere else in England.
In the second half the racial issues remain, but the significant difference is that is set 50 years ahead, in 2009 and in a predominantly black area. Now, a middle class black couple are in a position of power and are considering the application from a white couple looking to move into their neighbourhood. The same cast return adopting different roles, subtly skirting around racial issues until they can no longer keep up the facade and gradually their underlying racial and sexist tensions come out via the guise of telling ever more racist, sexist and crude jokes. These are directed at stereotypes of black men and culminate in the jaw dropping “what does a white woman and a tampon have in common?” joke that literally brings the action to a standstill and for the audience, results in a massive sharp intake of breath at the gobsmackingly blunt punch line. I imagine a certain Frankie Boyle would have been absolutely delighted if he had penned this joke himself.
It was ironic, that for a play examining racial tensions, there was a near total absence of non-white theatre goers in the audience. There can’t have been more than 20 black people (less than 3% of the 750 capacity Wyndham Theatre) in attendance on my night. Whilst this is nothing unusual for a regular West End play, considering the subject matter that’s quite surprising and a little disappointing. I would have to say this would appear to be deliberate on the part of the Playwright and Theatre and can be explained by two key factors. Firstly, the £40-50 average ticket price* (higher than the £35 2009 average west end show price) for seats in the stalls put the play financially out of reach for many and secondly, the total absence of marketing of the play to black audiences through black media and other relevant avenues, didn’t help in this regard.
Whilst it’s an excellent, intelligent play and extremely well acted, for all its award winning accolades and reviews, I didn’t find it quite lived up to the hype. For a start, the shrill, loud, put on, Southern American accent of Bev (ex- bunny boiler Stella from Eastenders) was irritating in the extreme and something that could have been toned down without weakening the effectiveness of her character in anyway. The opening of both the First and Second Act’s were also slow to get going, but once they sprung to life, they did so in no uncertain terms, with all the excitement , tension and anticipation of watching a group of middle-distance runners suddenly step up the pace as they jostle for best position, with the finishing line ahead.
A fine play from Bruce Norris that people will be talking about for some considerable time.
Clybourne Park runs until 7th May 2011
* 10 pairs of top price tickets are available daily to personal callers only for just £10. It's best to arrive by 9am as the tickets tend to sell out as soon as the box office opens at 10am.
- Michael Peters
25 Apr 11
Clybourne Park has just been awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Drama which is highly deserved, although it's mystifying that one of the other contenders was 'Detroit' wich was so disappointing for what was probably our only opportunity to visit the Steppenwolf Theatre in Chicago. It's interesting to see how a play, especially a comedy, will stand up to a second viewing, but Clybourne Park is still an astonishing achievement. The second act meltdown still had me crying with laughter, including THAT JOKE, even though the punchline is so familiar, even legendary. In the midst of the racial tension though the worst perceived insult is when Lena dares to criticise Lindsey's taste in home design. On a more serious level it is now clearer that Russ is selling his house to a black couple in 1959 not because he is a liberal but as an act of revenge for the way his neighbours reacted to his son's war crime and suicide. There have been a couple of cast changes since the Royal Court and both are even better that their predecessors. Sarah Goldberg and a very loud Sophie Thompson have been singled out for awards but this is surely a case of a brilliant ensemble doing full justice to a remarkable play. I just don't know how Bruce Norris can follow what is probably the best play of the 2000s so far but I am sure it will be well worth waiting for. Finally, on the subject of the Pulitzer Prize, when is a producer going to be brave enough to bring last year's winner to London? Mark Shenton is not the only person desperate to see Next to Normal again. - David Baxter
22 Apr 11
Was taken to see this for my birthday. It was totally engrossing. It worked and challenged on so many levels. Found it compelling, sad, funny, thought provoking, but most of all thoroughly enjoyable. Would like to go again, that says it all for me. - Mike Howard
11 Apr 11
fantastic, brilliant wonderful - jan rovier
08 Apr 11
Brilliant and intriguing play that lures you in until you realise the racial role reversal. Great acting and cracking dialogue especially in Act two - Tim Armitage
01 Mar 11
Yawn, yawn...,Coveney attention-seeking again by going against the flow. The new Jerusalem; a thrilling evening, even better on transfer. - gargar
13 Feb 11
Sophie Thompson is phenomenal!! Totally deserves the Olivier nod!! A great play...takes a while to get going but quite superb in its slow ambush as it draws you in. BTW....does the WOS reviewer (Michael Coveney) know the difference between a house and a bungalow? Apparently not!!
Also...is racialist a word....? Surely he should have used "racist"? Just saying... - South London
11 Feb 11
Glad this play came into the West End proper and well worth seeing. It was funny but also very meaningful too. Sophie Thompson as always was I think BRILLIANT in her part--she can move from funny to pathos so well. The rest of the cast were excellent too specially Stephen Campbell Moors (was so good in ALL Our Sons)and Lorna Brown whose joke about the Tampon and White woman was very funny--mind you now that we are so politically correct wonder if it would have been Ok the other race around?? Also Sarah Goldberg as the Deaf mute was funny and I don't agree with the WOS comment that it brought uneasy laughter--it was funny and you were laughing at the situation and not her as a person. Well done to all for such a good and enjoyable play. - Joe Spiteri
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