The behind-the-scenes action around Bruce Norris' Clybourne Park, an ingenious homage to Lorraine Hansberry's 1959 drama A Raisin in the Sun, has been drama-filled, to say the least. In February of 2010, Clybourne's New York premiere got the kind of rave reviews that usually guarantee a quick transfer to Broadway. But the play took a long, circuitous route to get there, stopping through London, where a new production got yet more critical praise and an Olivier Award, and picking up the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for drama. And the Broadway production planned for this spring nearly fell apart last week when producer Scott Rudin, feuding with Norris over an HBO adaptation of the novel The Corrections, withdrew his backing.
Luckily, Philadelphia audiences needn't concern themselves with any of this. They can see Clybourne right here at the Arden in a superlative production likely to equal any to come.
Norris' inspiration, A Raisin in the Sun, follows a black family in post-war Chicago as they attempt to buy a home in the white neighborhood of Clybourne Park. Norris keeps the first act of Clybourne in the same era, as Norris recruits a minor character from Raisin to refocus from the perspective of the white home sellers. Act 2 moves forward to 2009, when Clybourne Park is majority black; it's now a white family trying to overcome a fusillade of criticism over their attempts to either (from their point of view) buy and remodel that same house or (from the point of view of a neighborhood organization) kick off an avalanche of gentrification. The seven actors in the first act return as different characters in the second, underscoring our mounting sense that the more things change, the more they stay (fundamentally) the same.
Norris's command of structure and detail is dazzling, and he's equally virtuosic in the volleys of acerbic dialogue. Things reach a fever pitch in Act 2, when one character — stupidly, but (probably) without malice — tells an off-color joke that unleashes torrents of suppressed hostility from everyone. The audience doesn't know whether to laugh or cringe. This is Clybourne at its best, and in these moments it feels like an important play indeed.
Yet when Norris attempts to deal with his topics more seriously, the results can sometimes be half-baked. Several subplots are underdeveloped, and a thuddingly obvious metaphor involving a trunk should not have made it past the first draft. Norris's admiration for Hansberry is clear, but he could have learned something valuable from her directness.
I saw the much-ballyhooed London production of Clybourne, which was often brilliant, but (perhaps inevitably) failed to capture the distinctive American regional feel. At the Arden, director Ed Sobel nails the idiom with a more relaxed and naturalistic production. It's a smart approach — if a few moments of high comedy don't zing quite as much as they might, there are significant gains in the quieter moments. All seven actors are excellent individually and collectively — Ian Merrill Peakes and David Ingram especially shine — and design work is first-rate.
In all, this Clybourne is a splendid follow-up to the Arden's August: Osage County, and a vibrant testimonial to the continuing health of our American theater.
Through March 25, $29-$45, Arden Theatre, 40 N. Second St., 215-922-1122, ardentheatre.org.
