The Milwaukee Rep explores race relations and real estate with its latest show on the main stage. Rep Artistic Director Mark Clements helms a thoroughly satisfying comedy about the same house as seen from two different moments in time.
All the action before the intermission takes place in a home in Clybourne Park, Chicago in 1959. Jenny McKnight and Lee Ernst play a couple soon to be moving out of their home. Gerard Neugent plays the head of a neighborhood group who is concerned that the house they will be vacating is being sold to black people.
This first half of the play has a depth and sophistication about it that haas no difficulty at all embracing the complexity of life in the late 1950's. It's refreshing t o see this complexity brought to the stage. All too often the idea of domestic comedy in the era brings to mind wholesome sitcom imagery. Things were more complicated, though. Real people had real problems that are a lot more funny than the popular conception of the era popularized through sanitized notions fed through late '50s domestic sitcoms. Ernst and McKnight play a couple haunted by memories that drive them to leave the home. It's a touching portrayal of a couple of people trying to connect even as concerned members of the community reach out to them in ways that only make matters worse.
On the other side of intermission, we see the same home 50 years later. Clybourne Park is now a rundown neighborhood. The home is falling apart and a wealthy, young couple is looking to tear down the place and build a new home there. Here we have Neugent and Greta Wohlrabe playing the couple looking to move in. Rep newcomer James T. Alfred and Uprooted co-founder Marti Gobel play members of the community who grew up there . . . people formally trying to address concerns about how things will change with a new pair of wealthy residents. Questions of race boil over rather quickly and the script begins to delve into pretty traditional avenues of comedy for a contemporary look at race relations. And though it feels very real in places, the contemporary end of the script doesn't feel nearly as compelling as Act One in 1959. It's not bad, it just doesn't seem to be exploring anything that hasn't been explored in the recent past in much more elegant ways in other dramatic presentations. Contemporary race relations have been explored pretty extensively. The shock of seeing it in the late '50s is much more potent. That being said, Jams T. Alfred makes an impressive debut with the Rep. And Gobel brings a weight to the stage that holds a tremendous amount of dramatic weight.
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A script that straddles a lot of different ground in two distinctly different eras could have come up profoundly disjointed. True, the contemporary end of the story didn't feel as novel as Act One, but a production that can successfully straddle two different eras while also deftly weaving back and forth between serious drama and comedy is a remarkably good balance. Cements has done a good job of balancing this one.
The Milwaukee Rep's production of Clybourne Park runs through Februaary 24th at the Quadracci Powerhouse Theatre. For ticket reservations, call 414-224-9490 or visit the Milwaukee Rep online.
