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My Most Offensive Case of Culture Shock To Date Posted March 24, 2011 by Spencer Smith
Author: Spencer Smith LONDON — This Wednesday the London Program went out to see a West End performance of the well-received Clybourne Park. All the reviews had been excellent and I was excited to see a play focusing on the complexities of the issues surrounding race in America.
It was horrendous. The most uncomfortable I have been since arriving in London. It really forced me to view the theatre experience of London from a new perspective. I have tried to analysis this specific experience from a number of different angles, but every one is just as disappointing as the previous.
First, let me explain the play’s premise. Clybourne Park deals specifically with the complexities of race and housing. American playwright Bruce Norris wrote the play as a response to Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun (1959), a beautiful masterpiece that follows the Younger family’s move into Chicago’s all-white Clybourne Park neighborhood and the discrimination they face,
as well as the resulting drama created within the family. Norris’ adaptation fictionalizes the events before and after the Younger family’s move into Clybourne Park. It is advertised as a witty satire and is raved as the “most hilarious performance of the year”. I, however, struggled with its hilarity, especially the audience’s reaction.
The play begins in 1959 with a couple preparing to move out of their home in Clybourne Park. Russ, the husband, has drifted into depression after his son, returning from service in the
Korean War, committed suicide. Russ is extremely hostile towards the community because he believes they ostracized his son, who while in war was accused of murdering innocent civilians. Bev, the wife, is a comical creation whose exaggerated housewife characterizations incite a great deal of laughter from the audience.
Before long, a neighbor enters, accompanied by his deaf wife, and informs Russ and Bev their house has been sold to a black family. When he refers to them as “colored”, the neighborhood priest, also visiting, interjects, “I believe we use Negro” and the whole crowd erupts in laughter. The neighbor begs for Russ to sell the house to the church and prevent the family from moving in, out of fear that it will create a domino effect and the value of neighborhood will depreciate. At one point, the neighbor and priest sit down the black maid and her husband to ask them how they would feel about moving into the community. They dance around the issue of race and all the while the audience appears to find the whole scenario side-splitting. Russ, obviously caring little for the neighbor and the rest of the community, refuses. The neighbor does not cease and goes to the point of threatening to inform the black family about the suicide that occurred upstairs. This creates a volatile scene where Russ throws both the neighbor and priest out of the house. Mimicking a deaf person speaking the neighbor’s wife asks, “What happened” and the crowd again erupts in laughter.
Sitting in the far back with Krystnell and being able to see the entire audience’s reaction was absolutely horrifying. With a crowd that was at least 95% white, this specific showing of Clybourne Park took the very real and disturbing issues of race in America and turned it into a twenty-first-century minstrel show. I am still struggling with how seemingly everyone in the theater could find such humor in blatant racism, American veteran’s discrimination and people with disabilities. It was the most offensive audience I have ever witnessed.
I do not mean to totally diminish the play, just the British response to it. The second act is set in 2009 with the roles reversed. The actors are all playing new roles, and a white couple is attempting to move into the same house of a Clybourne Park neighborhood that has undergone years of gentrification and is recovering from crime and drug problems. The couple is wishing to demolish and build a new house, but is blocked by a neighborhood petition, presented by a local black couple. Again, they dance around the issue of race, telling some offensive and insulting jokes that send the audience rolling with laughter, until it all leads to another volatile climax.
I can imagine reading the text in an Earlham classroom and getting a great deal out of it. There are excellent examples of symbolism and juxtaposition that provide a great deal of opportunities for reflection and analysis. Incessant laughter, however, does not strike me as the appropriate response. I would be more understanding if I thought their comic impressions of the play were balanced with some sort of reflection, but I revisited some of the reviews from newspapers like The Guardian and The Observer and they are all the same. They start with a line classifying it as a satire that “addresses the hypocrisy of race in America” or “shows little has changed concerning race in America.” However, that is the last mention of any sort of critical analysis. Every review goes on to rave about the hilarious characters and nature of the play. Although I have no idea, I cannot imagine this was Norris’ intention when writing the play and adapting such a serious work as A Raisin in the Sun.
I am curious if there is a cultural difference. The play first debuted in New York and I wonder how American audiences responded to it. Perhaps it addressed a matter more real and pressing for them. Unfortunately, I sense the response has more to do with demographic and class status, and I am sure that Broadway audiences are just as white and upper-middle class as the West End’s. If the experience did anything for me, it was the audience
more than the play itself that showed me how prevalent racism still is amongst today’s “progressive” western societies.
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