A.C.T.’s Hilarious Clybourne Park Brings a Chicago Slum to San Francisco
Beverly (A.C.T. core acting company member René Augesen) and Russ (A.C.T. core acting company member Anthony Fusco), a married couple in 1959, are packing to leave their family home.
Beverly (René Augesen) offers a chafing dish that she never uses to her maid, Francine
(Omozé Idehenre).
Neighborhood association representative Karl (Richard Thieriot, left) discusses the sale of the house with Russ (Anthony Fusco), while their wives, Betsy ( Emily Kitchens, back left) and Beverly (René Augesen), make conversation.
Photos by Erik Tomasson
Clybourne Park, now at American Conservatory Theater, pays particular ironic attention to the marvelously comic lines of playwright Bruce Norris. A.C.T. Company core veterans René Augeson, Anthony Fusco and Gregory Wallace warmed up to make the production itellingly hilarious and sharply critical with an engrossing story that spans decades.
They try to sell the house.
René gloried in her ditzy character in Act I, and then reveled in the ennui of her different Act II character. Anthony sat in his grumpy chair mostly making unpleasant noises, as well he should considering what happened in the neighborhood he is moving out of, as he later intones vociferously. When the comic satire picked up steam, other characters were introduced to illustrate the plight of Bev and Russ (René and Anthony) as they are selling their family home.
Norris’ work is funny and provocative. The keen social insights of this play are chillingly obvious behind the broad overlay of incisive wit. The A.C.T. cast of seven (René Augesen, Manoel Felciano, Anthony Fusco, Gregory Wallace, Omozé Idehenre, Emily Kitchens, and Richard Thieriot) works enthusiastically as an ensemble in less than two hours. When they argue over buying Bev and Russ’ house years later, the actors allow their characters to be wholly focused on their own immediate needs to the exclusion of the larger issues of urban decay and racism raised by the play.
In 1959 Act I a middle-class white couple sells their home in a Chicago neighborhood to a black family, causing uproar. Neighborhood association representative Karl (Richard Thieriot) explains the differences between the races to house maid Francine (A.C.T. Master of Fine Arts Program graduate Omozé Idehenre) and her husband Albert (A.C.T. core acting Company member Gregory Wallace). Unctuous Karl seeks to undo the sale to Negroes by trying to convince them that they won’t be able to find their preferred foodstuffs in this lily-white area. René comes in and tries to give a castoff chafing dish to the maid. “We got our own things,” Omozé as Francine proudly refuses, saying she prefers spaghetti and meat balls.
They try to buy the house.
In the same house in 2009 Act II, the stakes are different, but the debate is strikingly familiar. The nabe has deteriorated drastically and the house is an empty derelict with wallpaper stripped and spray-paint tags on the bare walls. As an anomaly, a white couple is trying to buy into the now-black neighborhood. Worse, they seek to improve, tearing down the two-story and erecting a three story totally out of line with the local architectural aesthetics.
Between acts, the ensemble smoothly shifts from an Archie Bunker milieu to a contemporary property acquisition. In this story about race and real estate in America, the Act II characters discuss with barely contained hostility the deterioration of the neighborhood. In Act I, the local pseudo-activists want to keep blacks out of the neighborhood. In Act II, the same sorts of organizers want to keep the gentrifying whites out.
While the opening scenes focused on Anthony as Russ in his chair with his radio down stage left, the cast of seven actors eventually used all the stage under the direction of Jonathan Moscone, Artistic Director of California Shakespeare Theater, in his A.C.T. main stage debut. His CalShakes directing style is greatly different from what is usually seen at A.C.T. Though uneven or static at times, the staging picks up and becomes engrossing. The running gag of the trunk is handled with surprising humor moving into bitter-sweet poignancy. Moscone handled the surprisingly redemptive, optimistic ending simply and with no distracting flourishes.
The West Coast premiere of Clybourne Park by adamant provocateur Bruce Norris plays through February 13 at the American Conservatory Theater, 415 Geary Street, San Francisco. Tickets (starting at $10) are available online at www.act-sf.org or by calling the A.C.T. Box Office at 415.749.2228.
For a full review please visit www.DoctorTheater.com
.