Watching the current Hillbarn Theater production of “Clybourne Park” should be a priority for anyone who wants to have a serious thought about the role of race relations today and what that means: how it can affect friends, families, institutions, and communities – especially those who don’t have a clue About being racist.
The intelligent and objective drama of playwright Bruce Norris has won two Plum Awards: the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the 2012 Tony Award for Best Play. Under the strong guidance of Phaedra T. Boughton, Hillbarn’s production shows why he deserves those honors.
Acts one and two of the play lie 50 years apart, indicating how interracial relations have changed — and how they haven’t. The first chapter is set in 1959 in an affluent neighborhood of Chicago called Claiborne Park, while the second chapter is set there in 2009.
In Chapter 1, a middle-aged white couple, naive Biff (Mary Lou Toure) and her silent husband Ross (Ron Dritz) pack their house in preparation for their move from Claiborne Park.
Although they love their home very much, they hope to get a fresh start elsewhere because their only child, Kenny, killed himself in their house. Kenny, a Korean war veteran, returned from the war mentally unstable as he had to carry out orders from his senior officers to kill innocent men, women, and children.
As the couple were packing, their friend Carl (Scott Reardon) told them in a long, devious way, that they had – apparently inadvertently – sold their house to a family of negroes, not something suitable for that neighborhood at the time.
Chapter 2 is in the same house, now in the middle of a remodel with new paint on some walls, a cool white brick fireplace on one side and a modern front door. Clybourne Park is now an all-black neighborhood but is slowly improving. A white couple (Reardon and Caitlin Girdrum) want to buy, demolish, and rebuild the house, but are forced to negotiate local regulations with a black couple (Anjou Hippolyte and Ron Chapman) who represent the housing board. The meeting flies away when the character ‘Reardon’ is urged to tell a racist anti-gay joke.
It’s unclear why director Boughton decided to have the house in Act 2 undergo a renovation, rather than having graffiti and random holes through the drywall as the playwright wanted.
Other than that, Eric Olson’s scenic styling is well executed, Pam Lampkin’s costumes are appropriate for the two different time frames, and Ed Hunter’s lighting and Jules Indelicato’s voice work well.
Although the subject matter is difficult, it is as relevant today as it was when Norris wrote it. It is just as applicable on the San Francisco Peninsula as it was in southern Chicago.
Clybourne Park runs Thursday through Saturday at 8 p.m. and Sunday from 2 p.m. through October 30 at Hillbarn Theatre, 1285 E Hillsdale Blvd. , Foster City. Tickets $32-$60 at www.hillbarntheatre.org or 650-349-6411, ext. 2.
Originally published at San Jose News Bulletin
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