The American Dream is a great subject for theatre. Not only is it a powerful myth that animates millions, but it is also vulnerable to being subverted by generations of playwrights. Like an ageing boxer, it is liable to being floored by a well-aimed punch. In Bruce Norris’ new play, which premiered in New York earlier this year and has opened in London, comedy is the kick that topples the great giant of the American Dream.
The theme of Clybourne Park is race and property. As one character says: “The history of America is the history of property.” In the first act, set in 1959, we are chez Russ and Bev, a 40-something couple in suburban Chicago. It is soon apparent that everything is not well. They are moving because their son, a Korean veteran who was accused of war crimes, has hanged himself in their house, and Russ is haunted by the death.
But this family tragedy takes on another dimension when they are visited by the younger Karl, who represents the local community. He objects to the house being sold to a black family and predicts a dire future for the whole neighbourhood. He’s openly racist, which goes down very badly with Russ and Bev. Worse than that, their black servant, Francine, and her husband Albert, are not overly happy either.
In the second act, which is set in 2009, the house is a wreck. Karl’s dire predictions about the neighbourhood have proved to be partly correct, although it has recently recovered from the drugs and crime epidemic of the 1970s. But right now the local community is dominated by the black middle-class and although this particular house is dilapidated, the neighbourhood is on the up and up.
Now the tables are turned. The new incomers are not black, but white – namely a middle-class couple, Steve and his pregnant wife Lindsey, who want to buy the property in order to pull it down and build a new modern house. Gentrification marks the restatement of the American Dream. But the local community, represented mainly by Lena and Kevin – a black couple – have certain concerns that this huge new house will destroy the local townscape.
Norris has a wicked arsenal of cruel one-liners that pop around the set, bouncing along the floor or jumping up to smack an unsuspecting character in the chops. He also has a superb command of theatre form and one of the many joys of this lively and enjoyable play is to see the care he has taken to echo the 1959 scene in the contemporary one. In each, there is a pregnant woman; in each, there are unwelcome incomers; in each, racial stereotypes are inverted. But the sharpest tool in Norris’s box of tricks is humour.
In the final showdown between Steve and Lindsey, on one hand, and Lena and Kevin, on the other, a series of jokes are told, each of which is more tasteless than the previous one, and the telling of which is a competition between races. Not only does this allow Norris to indulge in the joys of politically incorrect transgression, but it also plays on one character calls our “latent fears”. Here, there are jokes that despise blacks and jokes that hate women. Yet the most taboo-busting joke is told by a black woman at the expense of white women. The effect is cathartic – and left the audience howling with delight.
A well as the antagonism between races, Clybourne Park also shows tensions between couples. In Dominic Cooke’s thoroughly enjoyable production, there is a mix of acting styles, with some characters cartoonish and others played for real, especially in the first part. The excellent cast – led by Martin Freeman – plays different characters in the first and second halves. All in all, there are few sights as entertaining as watching the American Dream being dragged on stage and given a good going over.
