Home sweet home?: Ben Deery, Rebecca Oldfield, William Troughton, Wole Sawyerr and Gloria Onitiri. Photo: Robert Day
Theatre: Richmond Theatre
Play: Clybourne Park
Playwright: Bruce Norris
Director: Daniel Buckroyd
Review by Arani Yogadeva
Clybourne Park, which explores the intersection of race, class and the ironies of proprietary gentrification, was a theatrical hit for its American writer Bruce Norris back in 2010. Starting its UK life at the Royal Court Theatre, it secured a West-End transfer and won an Olivier, Evening Standard and Critics’ Circle Best Play Awards that same year.
Norris wrote Clybourne Park as a companion piece to Lorraine Hansberry’s 1959 classic, A Raisin in the Sun. Her play revolves around the sale of a house in an all-white neighbourhood of Chicago called Clybourne Park to an African American family, led by Lena Younger with opposition from the residents’ association, represented by Karl Linder.
Placing an African American family centre-stage meant overcoming investment hurdles in the play being produced and in doing so Hansberry became the first female African American playwright to have a play staged on Broadway.
In Act one of Clybourne Park, Norris reimagines the same 1959 property transaction to the Younger family from the viewpoint of its white vendors, Russ and Bev (Mark Womack and Rebecca Manley) who are unseen in Hansberry’s play. They are a couple reeling from grief; their son Kenneth committed suicide in the house, having been accused of war atrocities.
Having sold their home at a knock down price, neither of them have met the buyers nor disclosed their son’s suicide to them. Karl (Ben Deery) arrives with his pregnant and deaf wife Betsy (Rebecca Oldfield) to express his strong objections that the house is being sold to an African American family.
The black housemaid Francine (Gloria Onitiri) and her husband Albert (Wole Sawyerr) find themselves dragged into the racially charged discussions, questionable analogies and stereotypes.
In Act two, Norris takes a fascinating leap forward to the 2009 post-Obama landscape. With the actors playing different characters 50 years later, Norris encourages us to draw parallels and explore not just the contrasting fate of the same house – now rundown – but also how the fate of the area’s black and white communities have played out.
The 21st century Clybourne Park is a predominately African American neighbourhood, coming through a period of gentrification. Jonathan Fensom’s set design which thoroughly and convincingly represents 1959, resorts to predictable ciphers such as graffiti for its ramshackle 2009 version.
A white couple Steve and the pregnant yummy-mummy Kathy (Deery and Oldfield) want to buy the house and seek to have their plans approved to raze and redevelop it for a profit. But they encounter resistance from Lena (Onitiri), the great-niece of the Lena Younger who bought it in 1959, and Kevin (Sawyerr) on the residents’ committee.
Lena argues that modernising the house would be sacrilege, undermining its historical and cultural significance. What ensues is a cleverly pitched verbal duel with increasingly close to the bone racial jokes freely traded.
Have the black members of the residents’ committee in 2009 become as prejudiced as their white counterparts were in 1959? Perhaps what actually connects them is the fact that property is at stake and, with it, perennial preoccupations of territory, status and class.
This brilliant revival is provocative, bitingly funny and a very polished production, directed with real clarity by Daniel Buckroyd. Deery and Onitiri give standout performances in both their roles. The most moving moment comes at the end of play when we are taken back to 1959 and we discover more about the tragedy behind the suicide of Russ and Bev’s son Kenneth.
Norris’ play may start during a war and travel through racial politics, but ultimately it returns to family, love, loss and cultural insecurity, neatly illustrating how the circle of life continues.
Clybourne Park was at Richmond Theatre as part of its first national tour until 28 May 2016, presented by Mercury Theatre Colchester.