'Clybourne Park' Looks at Race Relations in Two Eras

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Photo credit: Marquette University Theatre

Marquette University Theatre stages two moments in the history of a Chicago home in Bruce Norris’ comic drama Clybourne Park. The first half of the play takes place in 1959. Margaret Phillips endearingly plays a housewife desperately trying to keep some semblance of a normal life together as her husband (a suitably brooding Will Knox) rests an infinite emotional distance away. Haunted by the loss of a son, husband and wife are selling their home. A neighbor drops by to alert them that there is some concern in the neighborhood: their house in a white neighborhood is being sold to a black family. Brielle Richmond shifts uncomfortably in the role of an African American maid who is awkwardly drawn into a conversation about race relations.

Richmond transforms considerably as the play picks-up after intermission, half a century later, in 2009. The house is decaying. Lindsay Webster is cleverly and comically nuanced as a wealthy pregnant woman looking to buy the old house and extensively renovate it. Richmond and Mario Walker play a couple of people from the neighborhood who would like the old house to stay exactly as it is. A distracted dialogue between interested parties with opposing viewpoints explodes into off-kilter spoken aggression in a provocative look at race relations 50 years after Act One.

Even with overlapping themes echoing through the same house, the pairing of two acts with two completely different sets of characters played by the same ensemble might have felt confusingly disjointed. Director Jamie Cheatham cultivates a range of sympathetic moods and energies to pull together a unified and thoroughly satisfying drama.

Through Nov. 18 at Helfaer Theatre, 1304 W. Clybourn St. For tickets, call 414-288-7504.