Wyndham’s Theatre

A visit to London is not complete, for us, without an evening at a West End theatre and this time we chose to see a new play, Clybourne Park, at Wyndham’s Theatre. It had received favourable reviews for its humour and social insights, but there were no star names among the cast. We were not disappointed.
The ‘star’ is the writer, Bruce Norris, for a remarkable work which somehow captures the confused conversations and arguments among groups of between four and eight characters on stage simultaneously; it is difficult to imagine how the script actually looks on paper! But the excellent cast and their Director succeed in conveying all the nuances of the story and the audience hardly misses a word or a meaning.
The story has racial (and sometime racist) undertones as the group of neighbours and would-be neighbours reveal the differences and similarities between surburban life in Chicago in 1959 in Act 1 and 2009 in Act 2. The dialogue moves brilliantly between the social debate, inane discussion (‘what is the capital of Morocco?’) and expletive-laced rage plus racial ‘jokes’ as the storyline unfolds.
Overall, this is a play which makes you think, makes you laugh and certainly makes you admire the quality of the cast.