Clybourne Park, review by Kalyn Lai

The acting is so natural that you would think that you are sitting in on a normal conversation.  Clybourne Park is a play filled with tension and racism in a house in 1959 and fifty years later.  Although the play is provocative with its racism, the play also has comedy within. The SpeakEasy Stage Company performed this play in the Stanford Calderwood Pavilion at the Boston Center for the Arts.  Clybourne Park was created by Bruce Norris in 2010 in response to the play A Raisin in the Sun written by Lorraine Hansberry in 1959. The house that the Younger family wants to buy in A Raisin in the Sun is the house that Clybourne Park takes place in.  The first act of Clybourne Park is from the white owners perspective that are currently getting ready to move and are selling the house to the black family.  The second act takes places in 2009, fifty years later when the now black owners of the house are selling to a white family.

The set was very simply created.  There were no set changes throughout each act because it was always the same house.  It was interesting to see the changes between acts and five decades later.  When the house was still owned by the white folks, the house was neat and charming looking.  However, fifty years later when black people resided in the house, the floor looked scuffed up, there was no nice furniture anywhere, the front door looked ratty, and there were no other doors; the bathroom only had a curtain hung in replacement.

Clybourne Park was an interesting and entertaining play to watch.  There were points of seriousness as goes with any amount of tension, but there was enough comedy to kept the audience laughing.  At one point in the play everyone was making racist jokes at each other.  The characters seem very real in the way they talked to each other.  Both acts started out portraying what any normal person would see if they looked into a conversation.  However, as the act progressed the conversation began to get heated as the tension built and people’s ability to control their temper was broken.  It all seemed very real and something that could happen to anyone at any time.

Clybourne Park is play that will become a classic like Raisin in the Sun.  It already won a Tony Award in 2012 for best play.  It was a well-constructed play with a good balance of seriousness and comedy.   The play keeps people awake and entertained while also leaving the audience with something to ponder and question on the topic of race.