The Neighborhood Watch
Playwright Bruce Norris features a tantalizing list of six produced plays in his Playbill bio for the world premiere of his acid, pitch-black comedy Clybourne Park, only one of which (the fabulously, uncomfortably gimlet-eyed and unforgiving The Pain and the Itch) has been seen in NYC. Based on both The Pain and the Itch and now Clybourne Park, producers need to get on the phone about those missing five shows, because few playwrights today are cause for as much excitement as Norris.
Both a prequel and a sequel to A Raisin in the Sun, Clybourne Parks first act examines, in a madcap, I Love Lucy sort of way, the white family who sold their house to the African-American family in Lorraine Hansberrys play. Its second takes a long, deeply disturbing look at what has happened to the neighborhood since A Raisin in the Sun, skewering both the concept of a post-racial America and the older generation of playwrights (ahem, David Mamet) who have no sense of the ways or the rhythms the discussions regarding race now take.
Blessed with an ensemble from heaven that includes Christina Kirk (still improbably turning her lisp to her advantage), Annie Parisse, Jeremy Shamos, Damon Gupton, Crystal A. Dickinson, Frank Wood and Brendan Griffin, Clybourne Park sails serenely above the rest of this seasons plays, both on and off Broadway. Impossible to choose one performer out of this cast to highlight, but Kirks ditzy matron in the first act and snobby lawyer in the second act can barely utter a word without earning a surge of laughter.
Of course, Norris is treading on dangerous ground (as he also did in The Pain and the Itch) by eviscerating liberals as thoroughly as he does Hansberrys conservative Karl Linder, who appears in the first act here. To see a show in NYC that seems to say that liberals can be as outdated and mistaken as a Republican is generally verboten in New York theater, but how refreshing to see a playwright unafraid to say that actually, people are all assholes, regardless of politics. Were also spared any attempts at redemption for these characters, whether its Dickinsons angry black woman in the second act fighting the possibility of her neighborhoods gentrification at the hands of middle class couple Lindsey (Parisse) and Steve (Shamos), or Kirks first act housewife who argues for allowing African Americans into the neighborhood, even as she tries to foist unwanted kitchen appliances on her long-suffering maid. No one emerges unscathed from a Norris play, and Clybourne Park allows him to take his acid pen to new heights, even as the audience convulses in laughter.
Director Pam McKinnon has directed her actors to be fearless, which is the precise quality that makes Norris zingers hit their targets so admirably here. No one is shackled with the fear that they might not be likable, and the entire cast, to a person, turns in idiosyncratic, hilarious performances that never overshadows the others.
But even as we laugh, Norris is saying something serious and real about race in America today. Buried beneath the awful jokes is a genuine distaste for political correctness and a world in which our real feelings must be buried beneath a veneer of moral rectitude. What does that even mean? Steve demands, when everyone in the room claims to be offended by a joke he just told. As boorish as he can seem, Steve is ultimately the only character on stage in the second act that seems genuine, someone who isnt afraid of cutting through the bullshit and getting down to the brass tacks of why the neighborhood board doesnt want his family to move there. No one wants to admit an ugly truth, especially about themselves, and so Steve is lambasted for being outdated. But theres nothing outdated about Norris vicious, lacerating wit that hes brought to bear on real estate and race in Clybourne Park. Please, someone give us those five other Norris shows!
> Clybourne Park
Through Mar. 21. [Playwrights Horizons], 416 W. 42nd St. (betw. 9th & 10th Aves.), 212-279-4200; $65.