Think of it as a variation on a theme. In Bruce Norris's play, Clybourne Park, the dramatic plot begins with a stock portrayal of oft-glorified 1950's suburban America. A white middle class family is packing to move house. The family is cheerful to the point of nausea. Their black maid and her husband are going above and beyond to help. All is well in the Park to begin with but then things begin to unravel. We learn that the family is moving to escape a recent trauma. Neighbours and the local pastor arrive to express their concern for the family and their discomfort with the fact that their house is being purchased by a black family - the neighbourhood's second showing the beginning of a trend. The black maid and her husband express their discomfort with being dragged into the middle of an ensuing argument. Clybourne Park hurriedly becomes the prelude to 1960's Watts in Los Angeles or 1980's Brixton in London. The strife is both intra- and interracial.
What makes Clybourne Park different is that it follows the racial life cycle of the house from white to black to white again. The second act begins with a housing association meeting being run by middle class black leaders who are interviewing a white middle class couple wanting to purchase the very same house decades later. Clever, but is it too clever to sustain an audience for 2 hours?
I think Norris is onto something here but not because of his recognisable portrayal of inner city transformations. The true genius is in how he deftly demonstrates the overlapping nature of social 'isms'. In the second act, initial charges of racism lead quickly to accusations of sexism, homophobia, and expressions of religious intolerance belying the truth that goes unspoken in the play but that manages to come through loudly and clearly.
Racism, sexism, homophobia and religious intolerance are merely symptoms of unsuccessful attempts to bury the anxiety produced by the vulnerability that we all share in being human. It's the 1950's family's failure to process their trauma that forces them to sell the house and results in neighbour being pitted against neighbour. It's the white-on-black, black-on-white fear of losing one's way of life that causes each to lash out against one another. It's a white character's discomfort with interacting with his future black neighbour that leads to his poorly-timed racially-tinged joke. It's the decades of repressed anger that causes a black woman character to unabashedly and callously forgo an offer to unite over gender and instead attack her white female neighbour-to-be. The message is clear. Because we don't express our anxieties and process them on a day-to-day basis, we're doomed to find others on whom to project them.
If I were to criticise the play at all, it would be in its failure to attack the veracity of categories we use to divide ourselves. Nowadays, it seems a bit dated for white and black to attack one another with such little appreciation for shared ground. Also, Norris, a white-American playwright, could have been a bit more balanced in his portrayal of bigotry. Blacks came across largely as victimised beings with reactive anger. I think there's much about black anger that isn't reactive but instead an expression of individual existential crisis. Blacks are people too that struggle and make mistakes like anyone would. However, overall this was an enjoyable and edifying night at the theatre.
Kudos to Dominic Cooke, director of the play and Artistic Director of the Royal Court Theatre. Cooke created a highly synchronised and well-cast piece to be remembered.
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