MARK KENNEDY, Associated Press NEW YORK — The address 406 Clybourne Street has a special resonance in the theater. That's the place that offers a better life in Lorraine Hansberry's play "A Raisin in the Sun" – a sunny home with a garden in a white enclave where the black Younger family in 1959 plan to move in order to escape Chicago's South Side poverty. What happened to them there is unknown. Enter Bruce Norris. His sly, edgy gem "Clybourne Park," which opened Thursday at the Walter Kerr Theatre, is also set at 406 Clybourne Street. Act I picks up where Hansberry left off, and Act 2 jumps to 2009, when the house is about to be demolished, but its legacy is no less emotionally charged. "Cly
BEN BRANTLEY, New York Times ‘Clybourne Park’, by Bruce Norris, at Walter Kerr Theatre “Is this safe?” the man asks, as he guardedly takes a seat on a packing crate in the first act of “Clybourne Park,” Bruce Norris’s sharp-witted, sharp-toothed comedy of American uneasiness. Oh, foolish mortal. Of course it isn’t safe. You’re about to start talking about (can I say the word?) race. You might as well be running blindfolded through a minefield. It’s been more than two years since “Clybourne Park” was first staged in New York, Off Broadway at Playwrights Horizons. In the interim, a lot has happened both to this play — which opened Thursday night on Broadway in a superlative production at the W
MELISSA ROSE BERNARDO, Entertainment Weekly Stop me if you've heard this one before: A little white man goes to jail, and he's put in a cell with a big black guy. Wait, let's try another: What's long and hard — hmm...better not repeat that one. Okay: How is a white woman like a — oh no! Can't finish that one either. If you want to hear how these unprintable jokes end — and see a riveting Pulitzer Prize-winning play — you'll just have to go to Clybourne Park at Broadway's Walter Kerr Theatre. The aforementioned jokes may be questionably funny — high-minded liberal mom-to-be Lindsey (Annie Parisse) calls them ''disgusting,'' ''juvenile,'' and products of ''the worst possible type of obsolete b
by DAVID COTE, Time Out New York I doubt that George Zimmerman will ever see Clybourne Parkon Broadway. The man who killed Trayvon Martin is busy defending himself against second-degree murder charges in Florida, and scoring tickets to the 2011 Pulitzer Prize winner is probably not high on his to-do list. Still, he might benefit from Bruce Norris’s acid, bracing diptypch about prejudice and neighborliness, perhaps even recognize the play’s society, corroded by what Freud called “the narcissism of small differences.” Clybourne Park is a powerful work about closed communities, exclusion and dehumanization of the other. Wartime atrocities slouch in the background. It’s also shockingly funny, an
MICHAEL SOMMERS, New Jersey Newsroom It makes no big difference whether or not you are familiar with “A Raisin in the Sun,” which happens to be playwright Bruce Norris’ springboard for his intriguing “Clybourne Park.” Either way, Norris’ rueful comedy-drama thoughtfully considers social change over the last 50 years. First staged by Playwrights Horizons in early 2010, “Clybourne Park” nabbed a Pulitzer Prize in 2011 but only now arrives on Broadway at the Walter Kerr Theater, where it opened on Thursday with its original company of actors. The story takes place entirely in the living room of a bungalow in a Chicago suburb. The first act, set in 1959, involves a middle-aged couple who sell th
MATT WINDMAN, AM New York "Clybourne Park," Bruce Norris' shameless and brilliant satire of race, liberal attitudes, white flight and gentrification in suburbia, ought to have transferred straight to Broadway right after its lauded Off-Broadway premiere at Playwrights Horizons two seasons ago. After being produced around the country and in London and winning the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, the entire Off-Broadway cast has reunited for a much deserved Broadway run. The play is directly inspired by Lorraine Hansberry's classic "A Raisin in the Sun," in which the black Younger family bravely decides to leave Chicago's inner city and move into a white suburb. Act One, set in 1959, takes a look at
ERIK HAAGENSON, Backstage.com The little engine that could has nothing on “Clybourne Park.” Bruce Norris’ era-spanning satire on race in America premiered at Playwrights Horizons in 2010 to generally appreciative notices, played out its run, and closed with the promise of a host of regional theater productions to come. But after a 2011 production at England’s Royal Court Theatre won both the Olivier and Evening Standard awards for best play (the Brits do love to see those grotty Americans sent up), followed by Norris picking up a little thing called the Pulitzer Prize for drama, a group of intrepid producers led by Scott Rudin decided to bring the show to Broadway. He reassembled the Playwri
More than two years after it premiered in New York, Bruce Norris' acclaimed satirical sitcom on race, real estate and communication looks right at home on Broadway DAVID ROONEY, The Hollywood Reporter NEW YORK -- A lot has been written about Bruce Norris’ 2011 Pulitzer winner – in its original off-Broadway run; its hit London production, where it won the Olivier Award for best play; and in its recent Los Angeles stop. So much, in fact, that it seems almost superfluous to weigh in so late on this meaty satirical swipe at ingrained prejudices and the way we address them -- or fail to. But the fresh revelation is how well Clybourne Parkplays on Broadway. In Pam MacKinnon’s expert staging, this
How the house in Clybourne Park ages 50 years in fifteen minutes MICHAEL ALAN CONNELLY, New York Magazine In Bruce Norris’s Clybourne Park (opening April 19 at the Walter Kerr Theater), the set tells the story of an extreme socioeconomic shift in one Chicago neighborhood. Act One, set in 1959, shows a cozy, middle-class house whose owners are moving out (making way for the Youngers, the black family fromA Raisin in the Sun). Come 2009, in Act Two, the house reflects a neighborhood gone to seed and ready for the gentrifying white couple that wants to buy it and tear it down. “It needs to feel like the exact same house, only completely trashed, 50 years later,” says Daniel Ostling, the play’s
