It’s the 1950s, and a black family hopes to buy into an all-white neighborhood. No, the play this time isn’t “A Raisin in the Sun” or its modern-day theatrical riff, “Clybourne Park.” Rather, it’s “Luck of the Irish,” the new Lincoln Center LCT3 drama about race and real estate. And while comparisons are inevitable, Kirsten Greenidge’s thoughtful play stands on its own.
The action shifts back and forth between the late ’50s and early 2000s, which is when we first meet Hannah (Marsha Stephanie Blake) and her younger sister Nessa (Carra Patterson), who’ve recently inherited a large house in a Boston suburb from their late grandmother.
As we soon learn, the house was purchased decades earlier by a poor white Irish couple, Joe and Patty Ann Donovan (Dashiell Eaves and Amanda Quaid). They’d been enlisted by the sisters’ grandmother, Lucy Taylor (Eisa Davis), and her doctor husband, Rex (Victor Williams), to “ghost-buy” the house in an all-white neighborhood. For their troubles, the Donovans were paid a handsome fee.
“We don’t go in for that racial stuff,” Joe assures the sisters, though it’s clear that Patty Ann isn’t nearly as tolerant as her husband.
The conflict arises when the now elderly Patty Ann writes Hannah and her sister that she and her husband are the rightful owners of the house and want it back. And since the deed can’t be found, the law may well be on the Donovans’ side.
Greenidge, author of the acclaimed “Milk Like Sugar,” gives us incisive characterizations and pungent dialogue, though the modern-day segments aren’t nearly as compelling as those set in the past. The ensemble is superb — Davis is particularly impressive as the elegant, self-possessed Lucy — and, under Rebecca Taichman’s sensitive direction, “Luck of the Irish” is moving and thought-provoking. At $20 a ticket, it’s also one of the best theatrical bargains in town.