Hilton Als:: The New Yorker THE THEATRE review of "Luck of the Irish." In Kirsten Greenidge's new play, "Luck of the Irish" (directed by Rebecca Taichman, at Lincoln Center's Claire Tow), the black characters aren't a cliché of underprivilege; they're upper-middle-class, which frees them to be as individual and awful as anyone else. It's a mild day in the early two-thousands. Mr. Donovan (Robert Hogan), an elderly Irish-American man is standing on the lawn of a house in the fictional town of Bellington, Massachusetts, where Hannah (Marsha Stephanie Blake), a black woman in her thirties, lives with her husband, Rich (Frank Harts), and their children. Hannah co-owns the home with her single, younger sister, Nessa (Carra Patterson), who is visiting for the day. Soon enough, Mr. Donovan announces that he and his wife own the house, and that Mrs. Donovan wants it back. As the ground opens up beneath Hannah and Nessa's feet, the action shifts to their grandparents" apartment in nineteen-fifties Boston. Lucy Taylor (Eisa Davis), a young, beautiful housewife, fills every corner of the room. But when she smiles it's not to express joy so much as anguish: why must she tolerate so much stupidity in this imperfect world? Greenidge crosscuts relatively banal information with bits of fascinating insight about class consciousness, female anger, and black people who internalize and validate white standards of beauty and behavior. Although Greenidge's take on black middle-class life is truly exceptional, she is too bourgeois-minded when it comes to the play's structure and its plot points. It's as if she didn't think her canny, witchlike women are enough.