Remember when President Barack Obama was elected, and many essayists, political pundits and even some hopeful politicians mused that we might be in a “post racial” society? ‘Clybourne Park,’ a two-act play performing at Two Muses Theatre in West Bloomfield, reminds us with brilliant writing that we will probably never live in a post-racial world.

Act One is set in a suburb of Chicago, a housing community built after World War Two. The first 20 minutes of the play, set in 1959, are worrisome for the audience as we are trapped inside the deeply depressed soul and mood of Russ, a middle-aged husband whose melancholy and meanness is so deep that you start thinking, “Oh, please, No. The whole play can’t go like this.” And just when you check your watch, the drama lets loose for a pretty crackling forty minutes until intermission. The details of the story unfold about the source of Russ’s tortured soul and his relentlessly upbeat but obviously fragile wife Bev, played by Brenda Lane. Their son, who served in Korea, has killed himself in the upstairs bedroom.

The racial and racist themes in Act One happen between Bev and their black housekeeper, Francine, played by Ramona Lucius, and then between neighbor and noted Rotarian Karl, played by Travis Reiff, and Russ when he learns that Russ and Bev’s Realtor has sold their house to a…gasp…a black family–a seeming end of the world for the white, “Christian” residents of Clybourne Park.

The play’s author, Bruce Norris, wrote the story as a spinoff of Lorraine Hansberry’s “A Raisin in the Sun,” which premiered in 1959. Act One is a prequel to that play, while Act Two, with the same actors playing new characters, is set fifty years into the future. It helps to understand the play’s structure going in, as many patrons seemed to be befuddled for about ten or 15 minutes of Act Two, whispering and murmuring about whether the play was two independent one act plays until they caught on.

Act Two opens in the very same house where Act One takes place. Fifty years on, a white couple wants to substantially remodel the house, changing the character of the neighborhood. They are being confronted by a black couple, the wife being the grand niece of the woman who bought the house in 1959 and who still lives in the neighborhood. Karl, it seems, was right. When Russ sold his house to a black family, it began a white flight from Clybourne Park, and black families moved in.

The cast has a very strong ensemble feel, a credit to director Diane Hill who delivers a very tight production and honors a terrific script. John Boufford handles the duties of the grieving, repressed father with great depth and tension. In Act Two, he delivers more of a character sketch, solidly done, of a guy laying wire in the back yard. Brenda Lane shines as tortured Bev, relentlessly trying to keep her head above emotional water as she is continually being dragged down by Russ. In Act Two, she is the real-estate lawyer and daughter of the racist couple played in Act 1 who complained about the house being sold to the black family.

Ramona Lucius handles her two roles spot on, first as the subordinate but dignified domestic, and later as a forceful black woman of the 2000s standing up for what she feels she and her community have coming in terms of respect. Matios Simonian–as a priest you want to defrock and then punch, and then as a Realtor–has a lot of lifting to do with hate-worthy characters. It is a thankless job in the play that he does solidly. Phil Rice plays Albert, the husband of housekeeper in Act One, and then Kevin, husband of righteous Lena in Act Two. He nails both characterizations perfectly–especially Albert who is the 1950s black husband and father with a solid job to provide for his family, and who tries to respectfully diffuse and help the situation any way he can. There is a lot of subtlety in his portrayals, and a lot of different temperatures that should be appreciated.

Travis Reiff and Dani Cochrane play two sets of married couples. In Act 1, Reiff plays uber-racist Karl who scans as a geek and pussy, but is really the most dangerous bastard in the neighborhood, wielding social power in the housing development of Clyburne Park. If the play was in Mississippi, Karl would still be the bow-tie wearing Rotarian, except he’d be wearing a hood at night in the name of Christian racial superiority. In Act Two, he is the cranky dominated husband who acts racially inappropriate but insists over and over again he is not. He handles both roles, full of emotional peaks and staccato dialogue, like a pro. He’s got two characters nobody is going to like, and he wears them just right. Cochrane, in Act One, plays a highly believable deaf woman who we think only stays with lout Karl because she doesn’t hear most of what he says. In Act Two, she is the spot-on gluten-intolerant, pregnant and cranky, Whole-Foods shopping, Volvo-driving Sally Suburbia who loathes her husband’s ignorant comments and thinks her desire for an open floor-plan, upstairs laundry room and two-story solarium is significantly more valid than the historic aesthetic of the neighborhood. It’s as if she is saying, “We’re gonna gentrify this neighborhood because, of course, we’re white.”

Norris’s script is wonderful, hitting every note that great playwrights should strive for—closing the circle of the story naturally and tidily. The audience, confused at times unless they know the play, can’t miss, by the end, the tremendous job of symmetry achieved by Norris. The story line about the son who killed himself fits right in to the racism playing out on stage with the players, but I’ll leave that for the theater-goer to sort out.

Post-racial society? Forget it. Read the headlines and watch CNN. There is a blooming renaissance of black vs. white racism in major cities and in our political discourse. There is growing tension and violence between Muslims in the U.S., the U.K., France, Italy. And there is a terrific, pulsing play at Two Muses that will bring it all home for some thought and meaningful conversation on the way out.

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