Review: Clybourne Park at Denver's Curious Theatre
Clybourne Park is the first play in Curious' Season 14.
I saw the Thursday night performance last week. I'd like to share the experience, as perceived from Row A, Seat 15 (a highly desirable location, by the way).
It almost seems as if this play is so huge, it can't be devoured in one bite. Clybourne Park has something for everyone. It looks at issues surrounding diversity, conformity, acceptability, and segregation, and somehow manages to speak with 50 years of philosophical meaning. Clybourne Park, the story, written as having taken place in a Chicago suburb, gives the viewer the idea that if this city could speak and form an opinion on culture, admissibility, and policy, this story performed by these actors would be the argument it would embrace. It's as if the city (and this could be attributed to any city in America) is the fly on the wall of discretion; hearing and feeling every comment from the point of desire, claiming retribution for the injustices aimed at every regret bestowed upon every heart, and then asking for deferential apology. The stage isn't big enough to house all these opinions with the passionate resolve it takes to deliver such a composition of personalities with such a commitment to disparity, yet these actors do it.
I found myself going numb with comprehension. Abundantly overwhelmed with angst. The actors manage somehow to re-invent themselves from one act to the next, allowing the audience to exasperate with relief. We've moved on, time has passed, wounds have gone unhealed, yet our lives, our beliefs and our
strengths, albeit with the constraints dictated by these four walls, have adapted. I focused on one element for composure... an umbrella, which in the first act represented care, faith, the physical barrier against a potential turn for the worse, and with the passing of time, had changed ownership. The umbrella which at first appeared to be propriety (we won't show up giving the appearance of discourse), had become unnecessary, except to say that we have it should need be.
This play is a must-see, but you don't have much time if you're in Denver. It's at Curious Theatre now, but ends October 15.
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