Clybourne Park in Los Angeles

[+ Lucky]

This show is playing at the Mark Taper Forum downtown. I bought a ticket when it looked like the New York production was in jeopardy. The Taper Forum is part of the Music Center and includes the Ahmanson Theater and the Kirk Douglas theater. It is not a small auditorium, but also not a huge one. Attending the theater there has none of the ambiance or excitement of seeing a show on Broadway.

 

Clybourne Park won the British equivalent of the Tony for Best Play, and also won the Pulitzer Prize. Thus the savvy theater goer knows to give it a good review or else look ignorant.

I liked it, but for the life of me I don't know what is great about it. The first act takes place in 1959 as the house is being sold to black people, thus integrating the neighborhood. After intermission, we return 50 years later to a decrepit and graffiti tagged home that is now a fixer upper in a gentrifying neighborhood.

The focus in the first act is racism, the second act focuses on that as well as the need or desire to respect the history of the neighborhood. A new buyer wants to build a mini-mansion on the property which would not be in keeping with the other homes.

As part of the history of the house, the owners who are selling in 1959 want to keep secret the information that their son committed suicide in the house after he returned from war.

The actors are the same in both acts, obviously having different roles. My seat was excellent, only two rows from the stage, so I stayed awake and paid attention, but just did not get captivated or mesmerized by the performance.

[+ WilliamM]

Thanks so much for the review. That's one play I can cross off my list.

 

I saw "Homebody/Kabul" at the Mark Taper Forum in 2003. I agree about the theater, but I have seen so few shows in Los Angeles it was an interesting experience. Disney Hall had just open a few days before...I was able to take a tour of the new building. I guess the bright-eyed tourist in me is never going away!

[+ newatthis]

I greatly enjoyed the Steppenwolf production, especially the second act. I thought Norris did a brilliant job of conveying the discomfort of white liberals whose social agenda was in conflict with their economic agenda. Did the LA program notes mention Norris' idea that this play is something of a sequel to Lorraine Hansberry's "Raisin in the Sun?"

[+ Lucky]

They not only note the relation to Raisin in the Sun, but it plays concurrently in the Kirk Douglas theater.

[+ newatthis]

They not only note the relation to Raisin in the Sun, but it plays concurrently in the Kirk Douglas theater.

Nice idea. I saw Raisin a long time ago and had some trouble remembering a whole lot about it during Clybourne.