Not enough ridicule?

Is it churlish to say there aren't enough laughs in "Clybourne Park"? Is it mean spiried to say that Bruce Norris' Pulitzer prize-winning play (at the Walter Kerr Theater) was dull - that it was not especially entertaining. For the record: I'm NOT defensive of Lorraine Hansberry's play, "A Raisin In The Sun, which Norris' play references. It's a testament to "A Raisin In The Sun" 's enduring literary and dramatic prominence that it is studied and known, i.e. recognizable by a general audience.
I guess I'm quarreling with the idea that this is a comedy/satire -- that this play is funny at all. The pull quotes have you poised to burst at the sides. I didn't think it was funny. Mysides were safe. There wasn't much entertainment in it. Again I'll insist on being clear: I was not looking for broad, contemporary, television comedy. I understand and agree that witty rapartee and subtley satiric situations can be comedic. Ideas can be funny, too. But this play's comedy charms were largely lost on me because the dialogue didn't strike me as . . .well . . . funny. To an African American who knows the Hansberry play and lived out some of the same experience, this dialogue is along the lines of what "we knew all along they were saying." We've heard all this - or imagined it. I was sort of smiling wryly and thinking to myself, "Oh, wonderful now they are aknowledging all of this venom." That actually isn't the same as laughing. And if the audience doesn't laugh, it makes comedy/satire difficult. If the white audience members can look at this blast from the past and be amused, then more power to them. Many peoople did laugh. Laughing at the distant past is cathartic and instructive. In the interest of full disclosure, I did chuckle a bit. But I didn't feel the caustic tickle of satire as I did in George Wolfe's look at Hansberry's play. In "The Colored Museum," Wolfe hangs up the broad, gaudy slices of American stereotype and social mores and lampoons them all including Hansberry's sacred cows. He waggles his fingers in ridicule of them. That's true to the satirical form. And true to form, Wolfe's play, insulates its author from censure because it can be called satire.
It is easy to laugh at stereotypes. It is an American theatrical form of long tradition. Minstrelsy gets the audience laughing and howling along unthinkingly with easy pictures that need little explaination -- nothing complex. In minstrelsy -- the paragon of satire/stereotype -- the audience colludes. In fact, these audiences do half of the work because they come with their notions and their notions are then served back to them. The modern comedy/satire -- the post-minstrelsy, post racial comedy/satire -- ought to look at these notions, then serve them up again by hanging them high for a CAUSTIC look - perhaps including some finger-wagging.
The comedy/satire ought to have laughs and pacing and surprises and, for me, "Clybourne Park" did not. The only surprise was the ending. It tied up too neatly and left a lot unsaid and unexamined. You mean to tell me that all of this is on account of grudges and hurt feelings? I won't expand for fear of spoiling the resolution for folks who haven't been to see it. I thought it was unfortunate that the playwright or the director, Pat MacKinnon or both made this choice. The denouement resorted to a senitmental fillip -- kind of like sharpening a knife then drawing back and dulling it again in a backward stroke.
For me, the oddest thing is that Christina Kirk's characterizations were the most stereotypical, but also the least interesting. It was as if she were going with a style the others were not hewing to. It left her swinging in the wind unfortunately. In fact, the actors didn't seem to be playing the same style. I consider that to be a flaw of the direction rather than the playwright's or the actor's. I did like the performances of Annie Parisse and Crystal A. Dickinson.