‘Clybourne Park’
WHERE: San Diego REP, 79 Horton Plaza (Downtown)
WHEN: Sun., Tues. and Wed. 7 p.m., Thurs. – Sat. 8 p.m. through Feb. 10
INFO: 619-544-1000
WEB: sdrep.org
Not to be missed, ‘Clybourne Park’ is emblematic of the REP’s fine work of late
By Charlene Baldridge | SDUN Theater Critic
Continuing through Feb. 10 at San Diego Repertory Theatre, Bruce Norris’ Pulitzer Prize- and Tony Award-winning “Clybourne Park” is excellent, masterfully staged by Artistic Director Sam Woodhouse, and sports an acting ensemble that is absolutely divine. Despite its serious subject matter, the play is a raging comedy.
Near the end of Lorraine Hansberry’s 1959 “A Raisin in the Sun,” a Clybourne Park homeowner’s association member named Karl visits the matriarchal Lena and her family on Chicago’s South Side to persuade them not to move into the white suburb.
In Bruce Norris’ “Clybourne Park,” set in 1959 and 2009 in the home Lena purchased, the playwright explores Karl’s there-goes-the-neighborhood attitude, and posits that the Caucasian homeowner in “Raisin” acted on his own. In Act One scenes involving other Clybourne Park homeowners, the audience also learns why Russ (Mark Pinter) and his wife Bev (Sandy Campbell) priced their home so inexpensively that Lena could afford to buy it.
Seated amid their packing boxes, the inert and argumentative Russ eats Neapolitan ice cream, which precipitates a discussion of the word Neapolitan. Russ is still tortured by the death of his and Bev’s son, over two years ago. She is at wit’s end.
Enter the inept, terrified Rev. Jim (Jason Maddy), who has come to offer counsel. Enter Karl and his deaf, immensely pregnant wife, Betsy (Amanda Leigh Cobb), whom he wants to protect from the incursion of “colored people.” Already present is Bev’s African-American maid, Francine (Monique Gaffney), who is soon joined by her husband, Albert (Matt Orduña).
What begins calmly enough, hilariously evolves into fisticuffs by the end of the first act. We are in the presence of a masterful, amazingly tight ensemble.
In Act Two, set in Lena’s now derelict home 50 years later, the same actors take on an entirely different set of multifaceted characters, some related by blood to previous generations. The underlying theme is still racism.
Purchasers Steve and Lindsey (Heil and Cobb) hope to modify the house by building up. Their plans are under scrutiny of the homeowner’s association members, played by Campbell, Gaffney, Maddy and Orduña. Pinter portrays a workman, digging under the crepe myrtle in the backyard. His character could be straight out of Shakespeare, and so could all these rich and multi-layered characters.
