Conversations about Race in "Clybourne Park"

How do we talk about race in the Age of Obama?  Well, this season, it seems that almost every other playwright—on and off Broadway—has something to say on the subject. David Mamet has his characters screaming about it in his new play Race. David Bryan and Joe DePietro have theirs singing about it in Memphis.  And now comes Chicago-based playwright Bruce Norris with Clybourne Park, a new work at Playwrights Horizons that offers an audacious riff on the ur-race play in the American theatrical canon: Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun.

The homage is divided into two very different acts.  The first, contemporaneous with Hansberry’s play, is set in the then all-white enclave of Clybourne Park in the home of the middle-aged couple whose house the black Younger family is preparing to move into when Raisin ends. The second act moves the action up 50 years to the present when an affluent young white couple is attempting to buy and renovate the same house in what during the intervening decades had become a poor black neighborhood. It’s the gentrification story that is playing out across the country as the children and grandchildren of white families that fled to the suburbs now flow back into the center city.

The seven members of the cast, well directed by Pam MacKinnon, play different roles in each act and it’s entertaining to watch such talented actors explore the varied colors in the their emotional palettes. Singling out one seems totally unfair to the others and yet I can’t help giving extra kudos to Frank Wood who changes so much from the first act to the second that I almost didn’t recognize him except that he was so good in both. 

The play’s subject is serious, and of course, sensitive. So Norris works hard to find common ground. There are no heroes or villains. There are a couple of emotional subplots so that everyone who’s ever felt oppressed—and really, who hasn’t—gets at least a nod of recognition. The characters form alliances across race and gender lines. Then break them and form others. Norris also throws in as many tension-relieving laughs as he can, particularly in the second act.

But long before the curtain call, I was feeling unsatisfied.  Very little gets resolved in either act and I found myself asking, “what’s the point?”  After the show, my theatergoing buddy Bill and I stood in the lobby debating the show as the rest of the audience filed out around us.  And who knows, maybe that’s the point of Clybourne Park: to get people talking—not arguing or lecturing or haranguing or justifying—just talking about race.

Race, Rock & Romance in Amiable "Memphis"

If they gave Miss Congeniality awards on Broadway the way they do in the Miss America Pageant, the new musical Memphis, which opened at the Shubert Theatre on Monday night, would win hands down.  It’s not the best show on Broadway but it’s hard working, audience-friendly and eager to please. Even my notoriously picky husband K liked it.

Memphis also gets points, at least from me, for being a truly original musical—one that isn’t based on a movie or a comic book or a record album. In fact, the veteran producer George W. George, who died two years ago, is prominently credited in the Playbill for the story concept.  

The tale George came up with is loosely based on the life of Dewey Phillips, the white Memphis DJ who was one of the first to introduce white audiences to black music on his show back in the ‘50s and the very first to play Elvis Presley on the radio.  Phillips was a local celebrity for nearly a decade and even hosted a local teen dance show but he fell on hard times when most radio stations switched to a Top 40 format.  He died at just 42 after a life of heavy drinking and drug use. 

The show embroiders those basic facts with an interracial love story.  The Phillips-inspired character, who's called Huey Calhoun in the show, falls for a beautiful singer he meets while prowling the black blues clubs on the city’s famous Beale Street. In traditional showbiz-story fashion, he promises to make her a star and it’s no spoiler to say that he does. But their love is tested by disapproving relatives (her brother, his mother) racist goons, and their conflicting ambitions (he wants to stay in the south where he’s a big man, she wants to go north where it’s easier for a black woman to make the big time).  Along the way there’s lots of singing and dancing. 

The producers—all 30 of them—have poured money into the show. The production, overseen by director Christopher Ashley, looks great. David Gallo’s sets are fluid and clever without calling too much attention to themselves (even the video projections that he co-designed with Shawn Sagady are smartly done).  Same goes for Howell Binkley’s felicitous lighting. And the only word for Paul Tazewell’s period costumes is fabulous.

Alas, the show’s weak links are its book, lyrics and music.  Joe DePietro did the book and co-wrote the lyrics and both kind of resemble a scrapbook of favorite moments from Dreamgirls and Hairspray.  There’s an attempt to add some serious social commentary but there's also a simultaneous reluctance to scare audiences away and that creates lapses and bumpy transitions in the narrative.

The music by David Bryan, of Bon Jovi fame, isn't bad (in fact, the guy sitting in front of me got so into the show’s rousing R&B tunes that he could barely stay in his seat) but there’s nothing distinguishing about the songs either. Not one of them has stuck in my head. And that’s a shame in a musical that’s about music, particularly this paradigm-shattering music. 

But all the main characters get their power ballads or character numbers and they all do well by them, especially Chad Kimball who plays Huey and Montego Glover who plays his lady love Felicia (click here to read a Wall Street Journal interview with her).  And the dance numbers, choreographed by Sergio Trujillo, are energetically performed by a large ensemble of talented dancers, although a shout out has to be given to Vivian Nixon, who looks just like her mother Debbie Allen and may be even a better dancer.

So Memphis may not walk away with the crown but it’s got a winning personality. And that counts for a lot. It will also give theatergoers a really good time. And, when all is said and done, that's what really counts most.