044 – Clybourne Park, by Bruce Norris
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It is 1959 in Chicago and Russ and Bev are moving out of their three-bedroom bungalow at 406 Clybourne Park. The address of their house is important, because it is about to become the first property in the white middle-class neighbourhood of Clybourne Park to be sold to a black family, much to the consternation of some in the local community. The proposed sale of their house sparks heated debate between neighbours, which continues even 50 years later when we meet the next generation who want to purchase Russ and Bev’s property.
This is Bruce Norris’s provocative play, Clybourne Park, which is based on the real-life story of prejudice and persecution originally told in Lorraine Hansbury’s 1959 play A Raisin in the Sun. Norris’s 2010 play highlights our continuing anxieties and dysfunction over race, our obsession with property ownership, and the challenges of accepting and adapting to changing multi-culturalism in our societies. Clybourne Park won the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the 2012 Tony Award for Best Play. It received its first UK production at the Royal Court in September 2010, and transferred to the West End in February 2011, winning an Olivier award for Best New Play.
Clybourne Park is currently being revived at the Park Theatre in London in a thought-provoking and corruscatingly funny new production directed by Oliver Kaderbhai. I’m delighted that Oliver has joined me on the podcast to share his insights on this absorbing play.
Oliver Kaderbhai
Oliver Kaderbhai is an actor, director and producer. He graduated from Royal Holloway, University of London, in Drama and Theatre Studies, before founding the devising theatre company Delirium.
His credits as a Director include Clybourne Park (Park Theatre), Holes (CSSD), Striking 12 (Union Theatre), Songs of Abdulkarim (59 Productions, Kuwait), Peter Pan (Co-Director, Chichester Festival Theatre), One Minute (The Vaults), The Provoked Wife (Go People), From Where I’m Standing (Pegasus Theatre), Oranges on the Brain (Pegasus Theatre), Go To Your God Like A Soldier (Old Vic Tunnels), and Your Nation Loves You (Old Vic Tunnels).
He was Assistant or Associate Director on Jesus Christ Superstar (Regents Park Open Air Theatre), Running Wild (Regents Park Open Air Theatre and UK tour), Guys and Dolls (Playmakers Rep, USA) and Jack & The Beanstalk (Lyric, Hammersmith).
Acting credits include: The Man in the White Suit (West End), Margot, Dame (The Kings Head), The Best Man (West End), Jumping on my Shadow (Lakeside Arts), Hatch (Polka), One Minute (The Vaults), Ignition (Frantic Assembly), Go To Your God Like A Soldier (Underbelly, Edinburgh).
Oliver recommended Downstate by Bruce Norris
The Footnotes to our episode on Clybourne Park include listening for the echoes of the first act in the second half of the play, the small things that reveal the characters’ unconscious bias, and how we define the tribes we belong to.
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115 – The Dance of Death by August Strindberg
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August Strindberg’s The Dance of Death is set in a remote army base on the coast of Sweden, where an army captain and his wife are trapped together in an unhappy marriage. The captain, bitter at his lack of promotion, and his wife, frustrated at having been forced to give up her career as an actress, occupy their empty hours tearing into each other in a brutal dance of mutual cruelty.
Strindberg’s scorching portrait of marital strife was written in 1900, but has had a lasting influence. Arthur Miller dubbed Strindberg, “the mad inventor of modern theatre”, and echoes of his unflinching dissection of marital discord can be seen in the plays of Edward Albee, Tennessee Williams, Eugene O’Neill, and John Osborne.
Sir Richard Eyre adapted and directed a wonderful production of Dance of Death at the Orange Tree Theatre in Richmond upon Thames earlier this year, and I am delighted that Sir Richard joins me in this episode to guide us through Strindberg’s blistering onslaught on marriage.
114 – Love’s Labour’s Lost by William Shakespeare
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William Shakespeare’s Love’s Labour’s Lost is described on the title page in the first publication of its text in 1598 as “A Pleasant Conceited Comedie.” I imagine that the epithets were intended to highlight the play’s courtly aesthetic, its frothy merry-go-round of courtship, and above all perhaps, its ostentatiously intricate word play. For it is a play rich in the love and perils of language.
I am joined to assay Shakespeare’s conceited comedy by the Artistic Director of the Orange Tree Theatre in Richmond upon Thames, Tom Littler. In the summer of 2026 Tom adapted and directed a magical double bill of Shakespeare, producing Love’s Labour’s Lost and Much Ado About Nothing in repertory, and staging them both ‘en plein air’.
113 – Arcadia by Tom Stoppard
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Tom Stoppard’s 1993 play, Arcadia, is viewed by many as his finest play, renowned for the breadth of its intellectual interrogations and its formal invention. The play is a structural masterpiece of ideas, as well as a teasing detective story, joyous comedy, and emotionally rich exploration of love and loss.
As we record this episode a wonderful new production of Arcadia is playing at the Duke of York’s theatre in London’s West End, following its acclaimed run at the Old Vic theatre earlier this year. I am delighted to share the challenge and the pleasure of exploring Stoppard’s dazzling drama with the director of the new production, Carrie Cracknell.
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