Review of the play : Clybourne Park
Jul. 7th, 2012 10:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkatSaw the 2011 Pulitzer Prize and 2012 Tony Award winning play Clyborne Park today. Ventured out in the 98-100 degree heat to Manhattan and spent two hours in an air-conditioned theater watching the play. Had good seats, second row from the stage, literally at the corner of it. They were too close. In the future, I'm going to try for something a bit further back and further towards the center.
The play by Bruce Norris is written in response to Lorraine Hansberry's award winning play A Raisin in the Sun which was adapted into a movie, a film for television, and a musical. Both plays are based on Hansberry's family's experience moving into a neighborhood in the Washington Park division of Chicago back in 1934, as described in the famous US Supreme Court Case: Hansberry v. Lee .
Here's a quote from Lorraine Hansberry regarding the court case in her book To Be Young, Gifted, and Black
25 years ago, [my father] spent a small personal fortune, his considerable talents, and many years of his life fighting, in association with NAACP attorneys, Chicago’s ‘restrictive covenants’ in one of this nation's ugliest ghettos. That fight also required our family to occupy disputed property in a hellishly hostile ‘white neighborhood’ in which literally howling mobs surrounded our house… My memories of this ‘correct’ way of fighting white supremacy in America include being spat at, cursed and pummeled in the daily trek to and from school. And I also remember my desperate and courageous mother, patrolling our household all night with a loaded German Luger (pistol), doggedly guarding her four children, while my father fought the respectable part of the battle in the Washington court."
A Raisin in the Son focuses on the fictional Younger family in 1969, stand-in's for the Hansberry's with Karl Lindger, a minor white character, attempting to bribe them into selling their dream house to the Community Board who would in turn sell it to a "white family". Clyborne Park focuses on two time periods. The first act takes place in 1969, when Bev and Russ are selling their house to a black family, fed-up with the callousness of their community in regards to the tragic suicide of their son. Karl Lindger, a major character in this play, comes forward with his "deaf" and pregnant wife, to talk them out of it. And asks their maid, Francine, to support him in his claim. The second act which takes place in 2009, shows the house in a state of disrepair and in the process of being demolished and renovated to fit the needs of an upper-middle class white couple moving into the neighborhood. In this act, Lena, the great niece of the Younger family, petitions to stop the renovations and demolition of the building. The act is a meeting between Lena, her husband Keith, Lindsey, Steve, their attorney Kathy, and the Community Board rep/lawyer Tom.
On its face the play appears to be about the house or the fight over the house. But it's really not. What it is about is far more complicated. I'd say its about racism, but that's also a simplistic answer. What the play does delve into is the why of it. At its heart is a power play...and the driving force of that power play is the fear of change, first from the white neighbors, and then from the black community board. And the racial politics that drive those fears. This is where it is very different from A Raisin in the Son - which is a story about a family, Clyborne Park is a story about politics, about stereotypes, about how we inadvertently hurt each other through assumptions and how we exclude people because they aren't like us.
It is also a comedy. There are some laugh-out loud moments. Outrageous, irreverent, humor that can give South Park and Avenue Que a run for its money. Unlike both, I'd say the play has more to say and digs at deeper themes. It addresses head-on the dicey topic of gentrification and segregation, along with race-class wars - as seen in 1969 and today.
The more things change, Norris seems to state, the more certain things - how humans respond to change and to each other for example - stay the same.
The lines from A Raisin in the Sun which inspired Clyborne Park are these:
Mama: Course I don't want to make it sound fancier than it is...It's just a plain little old house - but it's made good and solid - and it will be ours. Walter Lee - it makes a difference in a man when he can walk on floors that belong to him..
Ruth: Where is it?
Mama: Well - well- it's out there in Clybourne Park
If you ever get a chance to see this play, do. It will haunt me for a very long time.
Like A Raisin in The Sun before it - it's the sort of play that changes you, makes you aware of things that you weren't aware of before or didn't really think about. I can't tell you that all the characters were likable, they aren't. But some are compelling.
And the play does make one think.
The play by Bruce Norris is written in response to Lorraine Hansberry's award winning play A Raisin in the Sun which was adapted into a movie, a film for television, and a musical. Both plays are based on Hansberry's family's experience moving into a neighborhood in the Washington Park division of Chicago back in 1934, as described in the famous US Supreme Court Case: Hansberry v. Lee .
Here's a quote from Lorraine Hansberry regarding the court case in her book To Be Young, Gifted, and Black
25 years ago, [my father] spent a small personal fortune, his considerable talents, and many years of his life fighting, in association with NAACP attorneys, Chicago’s ‘restrictive covenants’ in one of this nation's ugliest ghettos. That fight also required our family to occupy disputed property in a hellishly hostile ‘white neighborhood’ in which literally howling mobs surrounded our house… My memories of this ‘correct’ way of fighting white supremacy in America include being spat at, cursed and pummeled in the daily trek to and from school. And I also remember my desperate and courageous mother, patrolling our household all night with a loaded German Luger (pistol), doggedly guarding her four children, while my father fought the respectable part of the battle in the Washington court."
A Raisin in the Son focuses on the fictional Younger family in 1969, stand-in's for the Hansberry's with Karl Lindger, a minor white character, attempting to bribe them into selling their dream house to the Community Board who would in turn sell it to a "white family". Clyborne Park focuses on two time periods. The first act takes place in 1969, when Bev and Russ are selling their house to a black family, fed-up with the callousness of their community in regards to the tragic suicide of their son. Karl Lindger, a major character in this play, comes forward with his "deaf" and pregnant wife, to talk them out of it. And asks their maid, Francine, to support him in his claim. The second act which takes place in 2009, shows the house in a state of disrepair and in the process of being demolished and renovated to fit the needs of an upper-middle class white couple moving into the neighborhood. In this act, Lena, the great niece of the Younger family, petitions to stop the renovations and demolition of the building. The act is a meeting between Lena, her husband Keith, Lindsey, Steve, their attorney Kathy, and the Community Board rep/lawyer Tom.
On its face the play appears to be about the house or the fight over the house. But it's really not. What it is about is far more complicated. I'd say its about racism, but that's also a simplistic answer. What the play does delve into is the why of it. At its heart is a power play...and the driving force of that power play is the fear of change, first from the white neighbors, and then from the black community board. And the racial politics that drive those fears. This is where it is very different from A Raisin in the Son - which is a story about a family, Clyborne Park is a story about politics, about stereotypes, about how we inadvertently hurt each other through assumptions and how we exclude people because they aren't like us.
It is also a comedy. There are some laugh-out loud moments. Outrageous, irreverent, humor that can give South Park and Avenue Que a run for its money. Unlike both, I'd say the play has more to say and digs at deeper themes. It addresses head-on the dicey topic of gentrification and segregation, along with race-class wars - as seen in 1969 and today.
The more things change, Norris seems to state, the more certain things - how humans respond to change and to each other for example - stay the same.
The lines from A Raisin in the Sun which inspired Clyborne Park are these:
Mama: Course I don't want to make it sound fancier than it is...It's just a plain little old house - but it's made good and solid - and it will be ours. Walter Lee - it makes a difference in a man when he can walk on floors that belong to him..
Ruth: Where is it?
Mama: Well - well- it's out there in Clybourne Park
If you ever get a chance to see this play, do. It will haunt me for a very long time.
Like A Raisin in The Sun before it - it's the sort of play that changes you, makes you aware of things that you weren't aware of before or didn't really think about. I can't tell you that all the characters were likable, they aren't. But some are compelling.
And the play does make one think.
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Date: 2012-07-08 08:07 am (UTC)