Clybourne Park

Here’s another recent juicy Broadway/West End play, ignored by the Sydney Theatre Company but bringing packed houses to the Ensemble just across the harbour. It had to be hard to overlook: Clybourne Park has won American playwright Bruce Norris an Olivier (2011), an Evening Standard Award (2010), a London Critics Award (2010), a Tony (2012) and the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

With the entire season sold out before opening night, Ensemble subscribers are clearly not reluctant to embrace this hilarious, sharp, uncomfortable, often foul-mouthed portrait of US racism and community dynamics.

It’s really two thematically-linked one act plays on the same set but 50 years apart. Norris thrills with some of the fastest, choppiest, funniest dialogue around, managed here by a very strong team of seven actors, all with terrific Chicago-esque accents.

In Play One, set in 1959, a family home owned by a stressed white couple (Richard Sydenham and Wendy Strehlow) is being sold to an off-stage black family, much to the pent-up outrage of a spluttering neighbour (beanpole Nathan Lovejoy) backed by the nervous local minister (Thomas Campbell). It’s the lowering of standards (and property values) if ‘blacks’ or ‘coloureds’ are allowed to buy into the area that becomes the core issue, however consistently Norris’s hyperactive characters try to avoid tackling the subject.

In Play Two, set in 2009, the same house, now in disrepair, is wanted by a pushy white couple (Lovejoy and Briallen Clarke) who plan to push it over, probably aiming for a McMansion. The local black and liberal community are unhappy and, once again, carefully guarded racial tensions flare.

Director Tanya Goldberg conducts proceedings at the required gallop on a cramped setting that only just allows the action to flow. It’s bracing to watch these expert actors grab their opportunities with such enthusiasm. Paula Arundell – striking in two contrasting roles — gets to tell the filthiest joke I’ve ever heard on stage and the usually staid Ensemble first-nighters, after a shocked pause, howl with laughter.

*** Because of the instant sell-out, The Ensemble has already announced two extra performances at the 500-seat Concourse Theatre, Chatswood on 23^rd and 24^th April.

Frank Hatherley

Images: Briallen Clarke, Cleave Williams, Paula Arundell and Wendy Strehlow & Paula Arundell and Cleave Williams in Clybourne Park. Photographer: Clare Hawley.