Clybourne Park

This weekend has been almost an entire theater season in just one weekend. Friday night, we saw “Daddy Long Legs” and on Saturday night, we saw “Clybourne Park”. Both shows were at The Rep. Friday night’s show was on the main stage, while Saturday’s Stages production was down below, in the basement, sort of speak.

“Clybourne Park” (2010) is a play by Bruce Norris written in response to Lorraine Hansberry’s play “A Raisin in the Sun” (1959). It portrays fictional events set before and after the Hansberry play and is loosely based on historical events. The play was awarded the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the 2012 Tony Award for Best Play.

The first act of “Clybourne Park” is set in 1959 its events precede those portrayed in “A Raisin in the Sun”. In this act, the grieving parents Bev and Russ are planning to sell their home in the white middle-class Chicago neighborhood of Clybourne Park to the black family that was portrayed in “A Raisin in the Sun”. Their Korean War veteran son had just committed suicide and Russ blames the neighborhood for its callousness and cruelty to his son.

The second act was set fifty years later, in 2009. The scene is still the same, albeit somewhat worse for wear, Bev and Russ’s former living room. All of the actors reappear in new guises, some though portray characters with ties to the first act’s characters.  In the intervening half-century, Clybourne Park has become an all black neighborhood. A gentrifying white couple is seeking to buy and McMansion the house. They are being forced to negotiate with local housing regulations and a black couple that represents the neighborhood. This racial role reversal soon devolves from discussions of zoning regulations into an angry shouting match about race. The play’s climax is introduced by a handyman, played by the same actor that played Russ. He unearths the son’s foot-locker that Russ had buried fifty-years ago. A short coda closes the play, back again in 1959, Bev finds her son writing [his suicide note] late at night, she says, “I believe things are about to change for the better.”

Joanie joined us last night. We had dinner together at Cyrano’s. A historical note: Hansberry’s originating play was based upon real events in the Chicago neighborhood of Washington Park. The three-story red brick at 6140 S. Rhodes, which was sold in 1937, is up for landmark status.

Daddy Long Legs

The story of “Daddy Long Legs” has been around for a century. Jean Webster’s contemorary novel first hit the shelves in 1912. A hundred years later to the year “Daddy Long Legs” the musical premièred at the Saint Louis Repertory Theater. Anne and I saw it last night and loved it.

This two actor show tells the story of Jerusha (Judy) Abbott (played by Ephie Aardema) the oldest orphan in the John Grier Home. She is plucked from obscurity by a mysterious benefactor, a self-described John Smith. Smith will pay for her college education under the stipulation that she write him a letter each month, telling him how she is doing. Sort of sounds like contract blogging. He will never respond to her letters and she will never know who he is. In the home, Jerusha catches a glimpse of the shadow of her benefactor from the back, and knows he is a tall long-legged man. She jokingly takes to calling him Daddy-Long-Legs.

Jervis Pendleton (played by Kevin Earley) is the young man who is her secret benefactor. Daddy-Long-Legs is neither elderly nor bald, as Jerusha imagines. Reading her witty letters month after month Jervis grows fond of the girl. He decides to meet her not as Daddy-Long-Legs, but as himself, never revealing his secret identity. His duplicity becomes the central tension of this show.

Jean Webster wrote an epistolary novel and this convention is preserved in the musical adaptation. Jerusha’s letters are read aloud and also sung by both characters. Webster couched her tale in the form of a love story, but her real narrative was that of a young woman who discovers the world, loves what she finds and learns to find her place in it.

Almost since its inception, “Daddy Long Legs” has been adapted to movies and now theater. “Daddy Long Legs” films include, in 1919 (Mary Pickford), 1931 (Janet Gaynor and Warner Baxter), 1935 (Shirley Temple) and 1955 (Fred Astaire and Leslie Caron). I’ve read, or rather have tried to read epistolary novels in the past. I’ve been left with the experience of reading somebody else’s junk mail. The live-action of musical theater really brought this literary art form to life. As I’ve said before, we really enjoyed this show.

Before the show, we had dinner at CJ Muggs. Annie’s parents were seated at the table next to ours. We compared notes on our LA artist children and then talked politics. Both topics were quite mutually agreeable to us all.