Los Angeles Times
- Recommended
Can a drama be memorable if all its characters are disagreeable' Bruce "...Norris proves that it's possible in "Clybourne Park," his smart, abrasively funny and fiendishly provocative play that opened Wednesday at the Mark Taper Forum."
Variety
- Recommended
"...Yes, it's dangerous and provocative, but pulverizingly funny to boot."
LA Weekly
- Recommended
"...With this duo of plays, CTG is more of a curator than a producer. Though it's a welcome curatorial choice, it's a sign of the times for our larger institutional theaters, and their capacity for economic viability while fulfilling some larger purpose."
Backstage
- Recommended
"...Director Pam McKinnon adeptly guides a strong ensemble through Norris' steady stream of comic explosions."
Entertainment Today
- Recommended
"...Everything's the same as it was during the Pulitzer Prize-winning outing in the Big Apple, from the cast down to the graffiti on the walls of 406 Clybourne Street in the show's second act. That's all good news: It's still the same racially charged, brilliantly acted, clever show as it was before. So it should come as no surprise that the production is just as good as when EW's Melissa Rose Bernardo gave it a sterling A two years ago."
LAist
- Recommended
"..."Clybourne Park" is probably the most acclaimed new American play since John Patrick Shanley's "Doubt" back in 2004, and the original off-Broadway production, entire cast intact, is playing at the Taper this month before moving back for a Broadway run in April."
Stage and Cinema
- Recommended
"...To borrow the thought, the first act of Clybourne Park is a masterpiece; the second act, merely brilliant. This is just about the most powerful and provocative theatrical experience I've had watching a new American play since Tony Kushner's Angels in America."
LA Splash
- Recommended
"...Center Theatre Group has a great production on their hands with Clybourne Park. The cast across the board is solid, energetic, skilled and totally in sync – even across the two vastly differing generations depicted."
StageHappenings.com
- Somewhat Recommended
"...Despite the fun of their performances and some funny lines, I say to go see A Raisin in the Sun for a much more satisfying experience."
Examiner
- Recommended
"...The Playwrights Horizons Production of this Pulitzer Prize-winning play is currently at the Mark Taper Forum., raising uncomfortable questions even as the audience laughs and groans at obvious faux pas and racial conceits of the past."
CurtainUp
- Recommended
"...This sort of play makes me want to see everything else the author has written or will write. It combines tragedy with comedy with breahtaking smoothness. It's also about something, clearly but with the fumbling tones of everyday speech, in this play, raciscm."
ArtsBeatLA
- Recommended
"...Decidedly non-politically-correct, challenging and frequently squirm-inducing, Clybourne Park is a play that brilliantly captures the awkwardness of the overly-polite conversation and veneer of civility that so quickly can fall away."
LA Stage Times
- Recommended
"...And, now that I've seen Clybourne, I'm happy to report that it's well worth whatever effort was involved in bringing it to LA in time to play simultaneously with Raisin – and featuring the original Playwrights Horizons actors and the original director Pam MacKinnon, who will then move the play to Broadway in April."
OC Register
- Recommended
"...Provocative, even dangerous, Norris' play unflinchingly challenges all assumptions. His message is painful yet as clear as a shouted epithet: After 50 years, racism endures. Only the terms of the problem have changed."
Neon Tommy
- Somewhat Recommended
"..."Clybourne Park" is certainly an engaging, if exasperating, experience."
Frontiers
- Not Recommended
"...And under Pam MacKinnon's seamlessly dynamic direction, a fantastic cast does double duty, presenting what is hilarious and horrible about both eras and doing what great theater does best: holding the mirror up to society by examining the deeply etched details of finely wrought individual lives."
Culture Vulture
- Recommended
"...Director Pam MacKinnon has cleverly cast this play. The actors of Act I become the characters of Act II, but not necessarily in corresponding parts. It underscores the message that the more things change, the more they stay the same."
Total Theater
- Somewhat Recommended
"...This isn't to fault the actors - they delivered skilful, snappy performances. Same goes for the direction and production, which were first-rate. Wish I had something better to say about Norris, but I find it hard to get excited by a playwright who thinks it's the height of courage to poke fun at a deaf woman."
Grigware Blogspot
- Recommended
"...Now at the Mark Taper Forum, Park's director Pam MacKinnon holds tight reins over an outstanding ensemble, all of whom play two roles as the play shifts in two acts from 1959 to 2009."
OutWestArts
- Recommended
"...Though oddly, despite the quality of CTG's Broadway bound production, Norris' characters don't ever enter the mind when watching A Raisin in the Sun. Clybourne Park is a formidable edifice, but undoubtedly one that is at its best due to the foundations on which it was built."
