Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

Vexed issues

Clybourne Park <br /> Royal Court, until 2 October Tiny Kushner <br /> Tricycle, until 25 September

issue 11 September 2010

Clybourne Park
Royal Court, until 2 October

Tiny Kushner
Tricycle, until 25 September

Bash the bourgeoisie is a game the Royal Court likes playing and I’m always keen to join in. Bruce Norris, a brilliant American satirist, delighted us a few years back with The Pain and the Itch, a hilarious exposure of middle-class hypocrisy. Clybourne Park is a pair of plays set in a house in the prosperous Chicago suburbs. We start in the 1950s when black families are just arriving in the neighbourhood. We then fast-forward 60 years and see prosperous whites returning after decades of poverty and neglect.

The earlier play feels very wonky. The dice are overloaded against the whites. As well as their black servants, they have a deaf friend and a kid next door with Down’s syndrome. As this conveyor-belt of disadvantage trundles past we’re invited to gawp and giggle at our ancestors’ painful inability to conceal their prejudices.

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