CLYBOURNE PARK Reviews — Page 2

The Wall Street Journal is negative with the best title of the night:

"It happens that I was on the road throughout last year's off-Broadway run of "Clybourne Park," and ever since then I've been wondering what I missed. Was it really possible that a playwright had finally gotten up the nerve to take an unsparingly honest look at race relations in America? Stranger things have happened—but not this time around. "Clybourne Park" turns out to be a runny egg, a play that pretends to be daring but takes the utmost care not to be too challenging to the assumptions of its viewers.

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What makes the success of "Clybourne Park" so interesting is that American theater is a monoculture, a thick-walled bubble in which you'll look long and hard to find anyone with an opinion about anything that is anywhere other than well to the left of center. The trouble with monocultures, of course, is that they tend not to encourage self-criticism. Hence it's always worthy of note whenever a playwright dares to take shots at his own side. The bad news is that the comedy in "Clybourne Park" amounts to little more than lazy caricature. This is especially evident in the first act, which is peopled with vapid stick figures who appear to be drawn not from real life but from an Eisenhower-era television sitcom. If that's Mr. Norris's idea of satire, he needs to sharpen his pencil. Even the two black characters are long-suffering Noble Negroes, a clanking cliché that American playwrights should have outgrown long ago."

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303425504577353922386713222.html

NY Post is positive (3.5 stars out of 4):

"Under Pam McKinnon’s sharp direction, the ensemble, which created the show at Playwrights Horizons two years ago, vividly renders different yet oddly similar characters over a 50-year gap.

Shamos particularly shines as men who act surprised by the reactions — ranging from squirming to outraged — they provoke.

Norris has an especially keen ear for PC talk on both sides of the racial divide, and how everybody’s just out to protect their turf.

In 1959, Karl advises Russ against “disregarding the needs of the people who live in a community.” In 2009, it’s Lena who warns the newcomers and their architect (Kirk) that “there’s just a lot of pride, and a lot of memories in these houses.”

Without making a big deal of it — this isn’t a show that rams a message down your throat — Norris suggests that no one, whether neighbors, family or friends, actually listens to each other.

Karl’s wife may be hearing-impaired, but in “Clybourne Park,” many are hilariously, sadly, tone-deaf."

http://www.nypost.com/p/entertainment/theater/race_to_this_park_RJKMHGj9gapL1pf9N5TKFJ

NY Daily News is positive (4 out of 5 stars):

"Norris (“The Pain and the Itch”) doesn’t waste words or mince them. His script is lean and mean and raises smart ideas about great divides between races, classes and sexes. He also lands some stinging swats at lame political correctness.

Pam MacKinnon guides a first-class design team and a cast of seven, who reprise roles from 2010 and are terrific top-to-bottom. Each actor delivers vividly varied characters as they leap through eras and tonal shifts, including the sometimes too cartoony first act.

Outside the Walter Kerr, where “Clybourne Park” is rattling nerves, mock street signs cleverly spell out the title of the play in white letters set against black and in black letters against white. The X-shaped intersecting signs mark a crossroad, seemingly an inevitable place for change. Nope, not always."

http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/music-arts/review-pulitzer-winner-clybourne-park-tackles-race-real-estate-class-broadway-article-1.1064205

This reviews really floor me. I found the essays in the Lincoln Center program that was offered at the show to raise far better questions than the play. To me, the show desperately wanted to have A BIG THEME! and RAISE QUESTIONS!, but succeeded in only acting like it had a big theme and raising nothing new.

And I really don't see how anyone can describe Kirk as excellent. Her lisp aside- I didn't feel there was a genuine moment from her at all.

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"It's funny... what EW pointed out is exactly why I HATE the play. I feel like it TELLS you everything about the characters rather than SHOW you. It's all "let me describe myself" in a totally inorganic way."

Thank you Bjh, you hit what I felt was the show's major flaw right on the head. Also, like Kad, I felt Clybourne worked too hard to have A BIG THEME! rather than organically developing one. It just felt forced and completely false.

I can't believe I agree with both After Eight AND Terry Teachout. Day is night and cats are dogs. But Teachout pretty much nails it for me. The play is self-congratulatory and easy, full of false people and easy shots. Of course audiences will laugh at people very much like themselves acting like Norris' characters in the second act. It's the laughter of, "Oh, thank GOD we're much better than that!" Swapping racial jokes is supposed to make the audience turn inward and examine themselves?

F*CK, all one has to do is read the thread about the King and I revival to see a better discourse about race in modern America.

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No.

I see. Thank you.

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Did people fail to notice that two of the worst reviews came from decidedly right wing sources? Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg? Just sayin'...

I find "Clybourne Park" to be the best American play I've seen in years. And I saw it for the first time in London! I do admit when I saw it again at Steppenwolf last fall I didn't love it as much but I chalked it up to a) the surprise factor being gone, and that b) the cast wasn't quite as good (in London it included Sophie Thompson, Emma's talented sis, as the mother and the racist from "Raisin" was marvelously played by Martin Freeman from the Brit "Office" and "Sherlock" (and will be Bilbo Baggins). Not to say I didn't think the writing when I saw it again wasn't just as good, just as pointed, just as funny and just as heart-breaking.

Updated On: 4/20/12 at 12:58 PM

Not convinced it means anything, but that point certainly is interesting that the 2 most negative reviews came from the more "right wing" sources Bloomberg and WSJ. Then again, the conservative NY Post loved it.

On Curtain Critic, the WSJ and Bloomberg are the only 2 non-gold scores.
http://www.curtaincritic.com/Shows/CLYBOURNE_PARK_REVIEWS-141.html
The scores for it there are
89 Overall
89 Cast
89 Script
87 Tech