Monday Smiles – 1/16/2012
Sunday afternoon, Muri and I drove to the aging but still beautiful Los Angeles Music Center to see a matinee of the Pulitzer Prize winning play, Clybourne Park. The Music Center is a complex of three venues built around a plaza of sculpture, fountains and reflecting pools nearly at the center of the city. At one end of the complex is the largest of the venues,, the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, probably best known for the years it hosted the Academy
Awards. At the other end is the Ahmanson Theater, which presents large scale theatrical productions, particularly musicals. A circular building in the center is the Mark Taper Forum, which presents newer and edgier theatrical material. This, plus the more culturally and ethnically diverse audiences make theater at the Music Center a completely different experience from Orange County theater.
Clybourne Park is a dramatic comedy that picks up where A Raisin in the Sun leaves off. A Raisin in the Sun, set in the 1950s, is about an African American family, the Youngers, that purchases a house in the all-white neighborhood of Clybourne Park. In the final scene of Raisin, Carl Lindner, chairman of the Clybourne Park Welcoming Committee, tries to convince the Youngers not to buy the house, essentially saying that Negro families are happier when they stay in their own communities, which the Youngers refuse to do. In the first act of Clybourne, Lindner shows up at the home of the Stollers, trying to convince them not to sell to the Youngers. In a darkly humorous scene
involving the Stollers, Lidner and his wife, the local minister and the Stollers’ African American housekeeper, we get to see the racial attitudes prevalent in the times. Act Two turns the tables fifty years later as as a white couple prepares to tear down the same house but have to deal with a petition from the mostly African American neighbors regarding the design of the house they want to build. As the white couple, a couple from the neighborhood and two attorneys meet to work out a settlement, the negotiation starts out politely but as racial prejudices begin to leak out on both sides political correctness falls by the wayside. The humor has you laughing out loud but wondering whether you should be. The playwright, Bruce Norris, says, Cringing and laughing are two really good things … I always like it when (the audience doesn’t) know whether to laugh or cringe. In Clybourne Park, we cringe because Norris is unmasking us.
Interesting, provocative theater at a great venue on a Sunday afternoon. Dinner on the way home at the Elephant Bar. It’s Monday. I’m smiling.
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Tags: Clybourne Park, entertainment, Monday smiles, play, smiles, theater
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January 16, 2012 at 8:09 am
Sounds like a well-written work. Art that makes you think is an important contribution to society. Hope lots of people see it.
January 16, 2012 at 11:03 pm
It was a sellout got a standing ovation. The theme that our preoccupation with political correctness masks some of the warts in our society is one that I’m intrigued by.
January 16, 2012 at 8:35 am
That sounds like a good one. Looks like I missed my chance to see it here late last year…
January 16, 2012 at 11:01 pm
I had never heard of it either but found it when Muri and I were looking for something other than a movie. We’re pretty omnivorous when it comes to theater, so we find some really good plays … and occasionally, something awful.
January 16, 2012 at 12:21 pm
I’ve never heard of either plays: A Raisin in the Sun, or, Clybourne Park – however – after reading your blog post – they BOTH sound like plays I would absolutely enjoy.
I’m glad your smiling, Bud. I am too.
January 16, 2012 at 11:00 pm
They are both excellent … and very different. Raisin is pure drama but Clybourne is hysterical but thought provoking.