Washington Post - Highly Recommended
"...Tickets are selling quickly to the marvelous Woolly Mammoth Theatre reprise of “Clybourne Park,” the 2011 Pulitzer Prize winner for drama and the best work I’ve seen at Woolly in nine years of faithful patronage."
Examiner - Highly Recommended
"...The Pulitzer-winning “Clybourne Park” crackles with racial tension and dialogue like duels in its current rerun at DC’s Woolly Mammoth -- the second theater ever to produce the work that's also won top awards in London and Washington."
Washington City Paper - Recommended
"...At its heart, Norris’ play is about language—about what words we choose when we talk about race—but as the euphemisms break down, we don’t get candor or nuance. We get zingers, lots of them, leaving little room for catharsis and even less to illuminate how to deal with the very real issues of displacement, gentrification, and racism."
Washingtonian - Highly Recommended
"...Woolly made the wise decision to revive the Howard Shalwitz-directed play after it won Norris the Pulitzer Prize for drama earlier this year. And deservedly so, because it’s testament to his skills as a playwright that Clybourne Park—a play which largely ignores the meat in a theatrical sandwich and focuses instead on the two pieces of bread which enclose it—is so riveting. Fifty years pass between act one, which is set in a suburban house in 1959, and act two, set in the same house in 2009: 50 years in which many more dramatic events occur than the ones Norris details. And yet by choosing to examine what is essentially the beginning and the end of a story, he redefines the debate and closes in on what many more of us can identify with—the soft bigotry we come across every day, the well-meaning, thoughtless intentions which can be so offensive, and the eggshells which inevitably get trodden on every time the subject of race comes up."
BrightestYoungThings - Highly Recommended
"...The 2011 Pulitzer Prize winning drama flexes its muscle through the politics of language and the tapestry of historical realism to tactfully portray race relations, especially in regards to Chicago's gentrification and fierce allegiances to communal homogeneity. Two brilliantly mounted moments of drama slowly build and bottleneck in each act, one through the backdrop of the Korean War and the other through the uncomfortable balance of stereotype and verisimilitude in joke telling."
The Georgetowner - Highly Recommended
"...If you didn’t see “Clybourne” the first time around, please, please go see it—you’re in for a terrific play that encompasses ideas about how we lived yesterday, and today, in race-haunted America. Here in Washington, once known as “Chocolate City” for its long-standing African American majority population now drifting ever more towards vanilla, the themes of “Clybourne Park” resonate loudly."
DramaUrge - Highly Recommended
"...Still this award-winning production has everything else going for it, along with the best ensemble acting you'll see east of the Steppenwolf. And Mr. Shalwitz's staging along with Mr. Kronzer's set will get you to thinking about theater in a very personal way. Drop in and pay a visit while you can."
MD Theatre Guide - Highly Recommended
"...Truly deserving of all its recent accolades, this play’s script has more than a good chance of becoming required reading in college-level literature classes for decades to come. So get yourself down to Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company while there’s still time to see this play performed live with production values as impressive as these are."
DCTheatreScene - Highly Recommended
Had Howard Shalwitz, who built Woolly from nothing, done nothing in his life but direct this magnificent production, he would justly be remembered for a generation. It is the best ensemble acting I have ever seen.
BroadwayWorld - Highly Recommended
"...What a way to be introduced to the small intimate Woolly Mammoth Theatre. In my many excursions to DC, I had never made it previously. But when I read that the highly regarded Clybourne Park would be returning to the theater over the summer, I made a note not to miss it. And you shouldn't miss it either!"
