Had Lorraine Hansberry’s Younger family from “A Raisin in the Sun” wanted to move quietly into Clybourne Park, they could have engaged in a practice that informs another play about race and real estate, Kirsten Greenidge’s “Luck of the Irish.”
Described here as “ghost-buying,” this 1950s scheme involved an African-American family making a side deal with a white family that would (for a nice fee) buy a house in a white neighborhood in their own name and then turn the property over to the real buyers, who thus could forestall any advance effort by the neighbors to keep them out. As one of the characters in Greenidge’s play explains, a nice, black family had a better chance of a quiet life if they didn’t give their potentially hostile neighbors time to consider them in the abstract.
“Luck of the Irish” (which played New York’s Lincoln Center about a year ago and opened Monday night at the Next Theatre in Evanston) blends scenes from the 1950s with those from the present, and it explores one of the apparent dangers of this practice. What if the white family bought the house for the black family, per the agreement, but then balked when it came to actually signing over the deed?
That’s the situation in which family members seemingly find themselves after the death of their grandparents. Hannah (Lily Mojekwu), her sister Nessa (Lucy Sandy) and Hannah’s husband, Rich (Austin Talley), are all cleaning out their grandparents’ affairs and wondering about what to do with the piece of real estate they’ve been left. Then they suddenly hear from the neighbors, a Mr. and Mrs. Donovan (played by Walter Brody and Margaret Kusterman), who claim that the house belongs to them.
These scenes in the present are interspersed with those from the 1950s, when we watch the young versions of those dead grandparents, played by the superb Mildred Marie Langford and the nuanced Andre Teamer, negotiate with the younger versions of the Donovans, played by Chris Rickett and Cora Vander Broek.
Although this is Boston rather than the segregated South, Patty Anne Donovan still seethes with racially charged anger and resentment at the affluence of the black family in the face of her own family’s poverty. She even accuses them of “stealing” the titular luck of the Irish.
If you know Bruce Norris’ “Clybourne Park,” you’ll be struck by the similarities, although they are not egregious. This is more of a further riff on a potent subject. “Luck of the Irish” also tracks closely with David Lindsay-Abaire’s “Good People,” another play about the angst of the white working class in Boston. What’s problematic for me about “Luck of the Irish” is not its interest in these important themes but its plot’s reliance on the mystery of who actually owns this house, seemingly oblivious of the truth that deeds got recorded and that finding a piece of paper is hardly the only solution. These days, you could go online in a moment and settle the matter.
If you can get past that, and a few other things that strain credulity, you’ll find this writing interesting and provocative, if schematic and predictably to type in places.
The scenes wherein the descendants who didn’t create this problem see it as a metaphor for their ongoing struggles as African-Americans are very potent. So are the pictures of the white family, each partner struggling with a changing America.
Evanston audiences tend to like a good debate play, not to mention a chance to chat about houses, and this one will certainly get folks talking. Admirably, Greenidge focuses on the relationship between racial change in the macro sense and its impact on personal economic opportunity, and the play also makes room for the virtues of the expedient choice — the desire to not cause a big fuss that informs so many of our lives. I wouldn’t say Patty Anne Donovan’s anger is subtly drawn — her husband is created as a more complex character — but resentment was indeed ugly in that era.
Damon Kiely’s straight-up production has some very strong scenes: At one point, the entire opening-night audience felt like Vander Broek’s seething Patty Anne was going to come after them with her iron. Rickett forges a fulsome picture of a struggling entrepreneur, and the conversations involving Mojekwu’s Hannah, Sandy’s Nessa and Talley’s Rich are all involving and honest. But in Act 2, when the conflict must come to a head, things go awry, and some of the veracity dissipates.
That’s partly an issue with the script and partly the demands of a big show in a small theater, where some of the roles are harder to cast and the same character is split between two actors.
This production lays down incredibly careful groundwork throughout. Somehow, though, the last 15 minutes don’t build from what had gone before.
Twitter @ChrisJonesTrib
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When: Through Feb. 23
Where: Next Theatre, 927 Noyes St., Evanston
Running time: 2 hours
Tickets: $30-$45 at 847-475-1875 or nexttheatre.org
