Clybourne Park: Tony Award-Winning Best Play - Drama for Theater Lovers & Book Clubs

First of all, let me say that I'm glad to have purchased this book when it was selling at a price far more reasonable than the one it is being sold for at this writing. Apparently, the only edition currently available is the one published by the Royal Court Theatre in London, even though the play -- by a Chicago-based playwright -- was produced earlier by Playwrights Horizon in New York, where I was fortunate to have seen it last March.Reading the play reminded me of how enjoyable it was to have seen, as images of the superb Off-Broadway cast repeatedly flashed in my memory. Mr. Norris' play presents a different perspective on Lorraine Hansberry's classic play "A Raisin in the Sun." While that masterwork focuses on the Youngers, a Black family in Chicago about to move to a new home in Clybourne Park, a previously all-white neighborhood, Act I of "Clybourne Park" takes place at the same time, 1959, in the house to which the Youngers are about to move. Hansberry's sole white character in "Raisin...", Karl Lindner, visits the home just after his attempt to talk the Youngers out of moving into his neighborhood. That attempt having failed, he now tries to persuade the Stollers, the family selling the house at below-market value, to revoke the offer. We gradually learn why the house is available at such a bargain rate, through scenes involving a quirky group of well-delineated characters. Norris skillfully combines serious themes with a good deal of humor, and provides all of the actors with very juicy roles.This last continues to be true in Act II, which takes place fifty years later, in 2009, in the same house, now much changed. The same actors from Act I reappear in different roles, though some are in parallel relationships (e.g., married couples), and we soon realize how some of the Act II characters are connected to some whom we met in Act I. Norris cleverly shows us how the more things differ, the more they stay the same, as presumably "enlightened" characters prove to be even more uncivilized than their counterparts from half a century before. Once again, the characters are clearly drawn, and the dialogue is crisp and revealing. The play's conclusion merges the two acts neatly and theatrically."Clybourne Park" is an outstanding play which should be on the schedules of repertory companies all over the country.