Playwright: Bruce Norris
At: Steppenwolf Theatre, 1650 N. Halsted St., Phone: 312-335-1650;$20-$75. Runs through: Nov. 6
If you don't know already that 1959 was the year when the Younger family broke the color bar on the all-white neighborhood of Clybourne Park in Lorraine Hansberry's breakthrough drama, A Raisin In The Sun, rent the film on DVD or at least look it up on Wikipedia. It's not mandatory to viewing Bruce Norris' play, but will save you considerable orientation time.
Our story begins on that same date with Russ and Bev (whose surname we never learn, although Bev identifies as Irish) packing for moving day, having sold their house to the Youngers. The parish priest pays a visit to the curiously withdrawn Russ and is rebuffed by his host, politely at first, but escalating in hostility after the arrival of a neighborhood association rep distressed at the news of the imminent property transfer. Gradually we learn the underlying source of Russ' flight from his home and the fuss over the trunk in the atticactually, the army footlocker belonging to their Korean-war veteran son, now deceased under mysterious circumstances. We leave with Russ preparing to bury it in the yard.
Act two opens 50 years later, with the new owners of this same house encountering resistance from their future neighborssome the descendants of the seminal Younger clanseeking to enforce the zoning laws in opposition to the rehab-happy couple's plan to raze the vintage bungalow and replace it with a pre-fab McMansion.
The gender politics have changed toothe women now talk the turkey, while the men barely get in a word. The polyglot of euphemism, code words and double-talk has a depressing sameness, however, and when yuppie-hub Steve attempts to circumvent the obfuscation, he is roundly shushed by all present.
So what does happen to a dream deferred? Lofty insights and incisive satire can be quickly reduced to sitcom farce, but while Norris' play has its share of polyphonic uproar, physical humor and even a contest of ethnic jokes, he refuses to indulge our craving for complacency. The conceit of the same seven actors populating both periods emphasizes the theme of social progress being an illusion. Only after the dust has, literally, settled are we offered hope, as a taciturn landscaper and a lonely ghost-in-uniform share the contents of the chest turned up in the former's excavations, and in doing so, celebrate the true legacy of the site they occupy.