Clybourne Park‘s Cast of All-Stars
Bruce Norris’s Pulitzer Prize winning drama Clybourne Park play is making its way to the silver screen. Norris’s play, which also won a Tony Award on Broadway and an Olivier on the West End, will feature an all-star cast. Already signed onto the project are Emmy winners Uzo Aduba and Sarah Paulson. The Clybourne Park cast will also feature Martin Freeman and Anthony Mackie, according to Deadline.
MacKinnon’s Debut
Pam MacKinnon is slated to direct the stage-to-screen adaptation. She helmed the original Broadway production as well as the Off-Broadway debut. While she did not win a Tony for Best Direction that year, the 2012 production did earn her a nomination. She definitely has the chops, though, as she won the Tony for Best Direction in a Play the following year. MacKinnon is one of only ten women to win in a directing category. Clybourne Park will be her feature film debut.
Lorraine’s Legacy
Clybourne Park is Bruce Norris’s take on “what happens next” after the story ends in Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun. The first act of the plays begins in 1959. The play’s second act arrives in 2009, fifty years later.
Deadline summarizes that, “the subject of the play is Clybourne Park, a sleepy, “status quo” suburb of Chicago, which is sparked to life when a group of “well-meaning” neighbors convene a meeting to voice their concerns – dripping with politeness, apparent tolerance and searching innuendo. A blistering debate over property lines and community devolves into all-out war.”
Will Clybourne Park Hold Up?
On the film adaptation, Mackinnon describes the piece as “even more relevant as an investigation of white liberal fragility and hopes deferred,” according to news source Stylist. The play has received much criticism over the past decade. A review of a 2014 regional production penned by Jim Farmer claimed the piece was “flawed” but “will leave an audience talking.”
It remains to be seen how the film will be received. But with actors as talented as Uzo Aduba and Sarah Paulson, Clybourne Park will surely garner sizable audiences.
