First off, the actors in this play were totally innocent. They had agents, contracts, girlfriends to impress.
That said, Clybourne Park by Bruce Norris is the single worst attempt at theater that I have ever seen perpetrated upon an optimistic and unsuspecting audience. It is not so much a drama as a discussion, like a coffee-house argument but with movement. It is set in a house that is being sold. There are two acts, fifty years apart. Yes, your suspicion is correct; the positions of those several groups in conflict in the first act change over the years, become confused and contradictory. Some groups even switch positions with each other! Clever, No?
No. Incredibly contrived. Incredibly predictable. Incredibly shallow. And staggeringly arrogant. Aeschylus would not have tried this. The topics of this mess look like the agenda of a United Nations luncheon meeting. There is race relations, prejudice, illness, suicide, war crimes, depression, congenital disabilities, acquired disabilities, hypocrisy, poverty, patriotism, marital discord, women abuse, family stability, religion, social failure in religion, integrity of communities, xenophobia, real estate...the mind swims desperately for the surface. The single funniest moment in the play occurs when a grown man verbally and obscenely abuses a pregnant deaf girl.
One of the real problems with this play is the constant intellectual distraction the audience members suffer as they search for the causes of the inexplicable praise this creation has received. This won a Pulitzer Prize. "Powerful," "energetic," "rich," "darkly funny" and "touching" are repeatedly used in this play's reviews. And, as if quality were infective, it is constantly connected to “A Raisin in the Sun” by Lorraine Hansberry. Why? Perhaps because it involves real estate and some black actors are in it. Get it? And it is loud. Really loud with fighting spouses and a missing child. Like "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf." Get it?
Loud. Missing children. Real estate. Black actors.
In the neighborhood of genius.
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