Honors Roll In For CLYBOURNE PARK In SF

Bruce Norris's Clybourne Park, which will make its West Coast premiere at American Conservatory Theater (A.C.T.) in January, won the prestigious London Evening Standard Award for Best New Play last week and continues to receive critical acclaim in the United States: It has been named on the "Top Ten of 2010" lists of Entertainment Weekly, the New Yorker, the New York Times, and the Washington Post. In their announcements, critics heaped new praise on Clybourne Park and Norris: Ben Brantley of the New York Times named Clybourne Park "the year's slyest and bravest political comedy"; John Lahr of the New Yorker called the show "superb, elegantly written, and hilarious"; and Peter Marks of the Washington Post claimed it was "the best play in Washington this year, and then some."

A.C.T. will present the West Coast premiere of Clybourne Park January 20-February 13, 2011. Marking the A.C.T. mainstage debut of director Jonathan Moscone-longtime artistic director of California Shakespeare Theater-this "buzz-saw sharp new comedy" (The Washington Post) cleverly spins the events of A Raisin in the Sun to tell an unforgettable new story about race and real estate in America. Act I opens in 1959, as a white couple sells their home to a black family, causing uproar in their middle-class Chicago neighborhood. Act II transports us to the same house in 2009, when the stakes are different, but the debate is strikingly familiar. Amid lightning-quick repartee, the characters scramble for control of the situation, revealing how we can-and can't-distance ourselves from the stories that linger in our houses. Clybourne Park plays at the American Conservatory Theater (415 Geary Street, San Francisco).

Press night is Wednesday, January 26, 2011, at 8 p.m. Tickets (starting at $10) are available by calling the A.C.T. Box Office at 415.749.2228 or at www.act-sf.org.