White to Black and Back Again

In Raisin in the Sun, the first Broadway show by a black playwright, an African-American family moves into a bourgeois white neighborhood in Chicago called Clybourne Park. Today, a play called Clybourne Park puts a new spin on the story. In act one, it’s 1959, and a white family in a neighborhood called Clybourne Park is planning to sell their home to a black family over the opposition of the fearful local church. In act two, we return to the same house, but this time the tables have turned: A white family wants the home in Clybourne, which is now a gentrifying black neighborhood. Before buying the place, they have to negotiate with a black couple representing a neighborhood association. Both parties are linked by family ties to the drama over the house in 1959. Talk of housing codes degenerates into racial quarrels.

Clybourne Park has been staged internationally. It opens 2 p.m. Sunday at Caldwell Theatre (7901 N. Federal Highway, Boca Raton) and runs through February 6. Tickets cost $38 to $45. (Half-price tickets can generally be purchased the day of the show at culturalconnection.org.) Call 561-241-7432, or visit caldwelltheatre.com.
Sun., Jan. 2, 2 p.m.; Wednesdays-Sundays. Starts: Jan. 2. Continues through Feb. 6, 2011