Clybourne Park latest in string of winners for Yellow Tree Theatre

Photo by Keri Pickett

Dan Hopman, Laura Esping, Ricardo Beaird and Joetta Wright

Clybourne Park is a thorn-thicket of a play, as it delves into issues that people either pretend don’t exist; or engage in with all of the sudelty of a two-by-four to the face.

Yellow Tree Theatre — the little theater in ex-ubranian Osseo that has yet to meet a challenge they weren’t willing to meet — makes the most of the opportunities in Bruce Norris’ script.

The main issue on the menu? Race. Specifically, America’s uneasy relationship with the issue. Norris uses the landmark play, A Raisin in the Sun, to set his stage. In that play, a black family escapes inner-city Chicago for a new home in a white neighborhood. There, they find a different set of problems.

Clybourne Park is really two one-act plays connected by a single place. In act one, it is 1959, in the days immediately before the Younger family moves to the Woodlawn neighborhood. Act two finds the us in the same location 50 years later. The decades have not been kind to the home, which has become an abounded ruin amid a now predominately black neighborhood. This time out, a white couple is looking to move in, but finds resistance to their plans from their black neighbors.

That’s the structure — and Norris puts plenty of overt and sly connections between the two halves (one character in act two, for example, is an unborn child in the first act) — that the playwright then uses to probe into society's changes over the decades. It's not just race. The original home owners are selling to escape a neighborhood that has turned its back on them after their son came back from Korea in disgrace.

Patriarch Russ is tired of the bullshit that surrounds him, and offers an increasingly caustic and angry reaction to the neighbors who drop by, especially Karl, who wants to scuttle the home sale and keep the neighborhood white.

When we flashforward 50 years, the dynamic has changed. The folks gathered in the ruin of the house are there for a negotiation. A young white couple has bought the house and wants to make considerable renovations. The local community -- now primarily black -- doesn't want the historic character of the neighborhood to change.

Each time, the conversation goes from polite to caustic and angry, which provides not just food for thought, but a chance for the performers to dig deep into their characters.

Patrick Coyle leads the charge as Russ. The character has descended deep into grief and rage, but Hopman works to earn every hard moment for the character. He is well matched by Laura Esping, who plays his equally hurt wife, Bev.

Jason Peterson, Yellow Tree's co-artistic director, plays a pair of clean-cut unlikable chaps. In act one, his slimy Karl never knows when to quit, which triggers Russ' final rage. In the second half, he is one half of the young buyers, who is clearly the kind of person you can tolerate for about ten minutes before building a strong, abiding hate.

Director Craig Johnson controls all of this chaos, building in parallels between the two acts in the way the show is staged and maintaining a strong pace throughout. There is also enough room for the performances to breathe, so we build sympathies with (some of) the characters and are able to ponder these people leaving politeness behind and finally say what they really are thinking.

Clybourne Park runs through March 6 at Yellow Tree Theatre. Visit online for tickets and more information.