Steppenwolf's 'Clybourne Park' an explosive meditation on race
Amy Morton is known for giving smoldering performances at Steppenwolf Theatre. She might come on sultry and smoking at first, but almost inevitably she ignites with a fiery intensity, as in “Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” a year ago.
So it's no surprise that Steppenwolf's latest production, “Clybourne Park,” shares those same qualities, as it's directed by ensemble member Morton. It's a tour de force for actors, with the seven members of the cast playing different and parallel roles in the first and second acts, set in the same Chicago house 50 years apart, but in Morton's hands playwright Bruce Norris' Pulitzer Prize-winning script becomes a director's showcase as well. The staging and pacing give this play its charge and enable it to use ditsy comedy as the stuff of explosive drama.
I'm going to be unusually careful with spoilers here, as one of the delights of the play is the way it springs its various surprises on the audience as it shifts in tone from giddy good humor to dark, guilt-ridden tragedy and back again. It opens in 1959 in a house apparently not far from Steppenwolf's current North Side home. John Judd's Russ is listening to “Catch a Falling Star” on the radio and eating ice cream out of a carton, which causes his flighty wife, Kirsten Fitzgerald's Bev, to muse on how “Neapolitan” can't possibly be derived from Naples, Italy. She, meanwhile, is advising the uniformed help, Karen Aldridge's Francine, on how to pack their things, as she and Russ are in the process of moving. Enter a string of guests to wish them well — and with other things on their minds, as it turns out.
The play is content at first to be simply entertaining, with Russ establishing himself as something of a wag of the sort uniquely produced by that so-called Greatest Generation, and Bev as part Gracie Allen, part Totie Fields.
“Knowledge is power, Bev,” advises Brendan Marshall-Rashid's Rev. Jim.
“Then I choose to remain powerless,” Bev replies.
Yet Russ soon proves himself to be something of a ticking time bomb as well, especially after Cliff Chamberlain's Karl drops by to take issue with just whom Russ and Bev are selling the house to. This being Chicago in the 1950s, of course the issue is race (not that the city is much more integrated now, a fact the play uses as an implicit indictment in Act II, while the whole production grows directly out of Lorraine Hansberry's classic “A Raisin in the Sun”). Even here, however, the play mines its conscience with jokes, as Carl's wife, Stephanie Childers' Betsy, is deaf, prompting Bev to exaggerate every vocal inflection to communicate. Even after race has raised its head, Francine's husband, Albert, played by lone Steppenwolf trouper James Vincent Meredith, drops a bomb of stereotypical humor into the conversation, something he'll do in the second act as well.
Skip ahead 50 years to that second act, and there's no pussyfooting around, at least not in introducing the characters. Six are placed immediately in the house, which is now decrepit, and they'll be joined by Judd's handyman Dan soon enough. Again, I'll err on the side of caution in setting the scene and characters, as it's clearly Norris' intent to have the audience figure it all out as it goes along. Yet a few of the characters are playing relatives of those either seen or mentioned in the first act, and even as their personalities are different — with Fitzgerald undergoing the most abrupt change, from ditsy housewife to brash attorney, complete with a braying, Midwestern, nasal, “Oh my gawd” — their functions and the way they interact are startlingly familiar.
Race is the point of this play — it's ironic that in the current day everyone is brandishing his or her ethnicity and the way they all fit or violate stereotypes — but Norris finds ways to enlarge his scope to take on sexism as well as homophobia, and as the debate rages in intensity and reaches its peak he places the entire American history of military brutality and endemic violence at their feet in the form of a footlocker. What starts out as a domestic sitcom becomes a national nightmare, yet the transition is achieved so naturally it never jars the audience, which makes it all the more disarming and powerful.
One spoiler perhaps needs to be revealed: Steppenwolf's unifying theme this season is “Dispatches From the Homefront,” how everyday lives are touched by war, how war inevitably returns home. How that figures in a social-issue play about racism is testimony to Norris' achievement. Yet it's Morton who's the key to getting the season off to a stunning start with “Clybourne Park,” and she'll push it along by directing the follow-up, the Trojan War-inspired “Penelope,” later this year. The company couldn't be in better hands; neither could theatergoers.
“Clybourne Park”
★ ★ ★ ½
<b>Location: </b>Steppenwolf Theatre, 1650 N. Halsted St., Chicago, (312) 335-1650 or <a href="http://www.steppenwolf.org/" target="_blank">steppenwolf.org</a>
<b>Showtimes: </b>7:30 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday; 3 p.m. Saturday and Sunday; 3 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 19, 26 and Nov. 2; runs through Nov. 6
<b>Running time:</b> Two hours including intermission
<b>Tickets: </b>$20-$75
<b>Parking: </b>Metered street parking and a paid garage
<b>Rating: </b>Not for younger children; strong language and adult themes