Tarek Coleman, Derek Shaun, Angela D. Watson, Latonya Kitchen and Dominique Johnson.
When Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun debuted on Broadway in 1959 America was, at least on the surface, a much different place: More vocally-segregated, more vocally scared of black people, more openly racist. The civil rights movement had begun to gain traction but hadn’t exploded as it would within the next few years.
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. had yet to become a household name. Brown vs. the Board of Education had taken place five years prior, and Rosa Parks had refused to give up her seat in Montgomery Alabama only four years before its debut. All across the country, black Americans were split between an older generation who had spent a lifetime struggling for freedom and a newer generation uncovering a lineage that had been disenfranchised for so long that they didn’t quite know how to express themselves.
A Raisin in the Sun was arguably the first play to treat black Americans like real people and not caricatures or archetypes. It paints a multi-generational picture of a black family at a crucial moment in American history in a way that is effortlessly three-dimensional, topical, political and engaging. When the weight of the play’s emotional heights is pulled taught and given momentum, Raisin can still pack a wallop, but when it is drawn out and left to bemoan its characters’ plights, it can cross over into melodrama.
Director Phyllis Gitlin’s revival, on stage now at the Long Beach Playhouse, sort of splits the difference. The production jumps back and forth between a visceral, contemporary rendering and one where the actors are given free-reign of the material to the determent of the play’s pace and potency.
The basic plot of A Raisin in the Sun is deceptively simple and can be summed up in a few sentences:
After the recent death of the family patriarch, the Youngers, a black family living on the south side of Chicago, are all eagerly awaiting the arrival of his life insurance check. With all five members of the family sharing a small two-bedroom apartment, the dreams about what can be done with the money, which is a greater sum than the family has ever had its hands on, remain divided. The matriarch of the family, Lena, is tight lipped about what she will do with it (the check is addressed to her), while her son, Walter, has dreams of investing it in a liquor store. The conflict between doing something practical with the funds and taking the sort of gamble Walter dreams of lays the course for the drama of the play. But what truly makes A Raisin in the Sun a classic is how this conflict allows us to explore the multifaceted, generational differences affecting black Americans living in our country’s urban environments.
While Lena still remembers a time when even daydreaming about having a moderate quality of life seemed far fetched, Walter has become a man conflicted by culturally assimilated aspirations of money that haunt his daily life.
Gitlin has assembled one of the stronger casts I’ve seen for a Playhouse production in a while, but the pace and tone of the drama shifted a bit too frequently to send the production over the top. With a well cast ensemble and great material however, there is plenty to recommend this Raisin and, as is often the case with theater, the inconsistencies of some elements illuminate other characters or subplots that often get lost in the shuffle.
Derek Shaun and Angela D. Watson.
First, the good news: Derek Shaun plays a grounded and believable Walter Young, a feat when playing up against the memory of Sidney Poitier’s famous portrayal of Walter in the classic film adaptation. For me, the casting of Mr. Poitier in the film has always been a confusing choice. Born in the Bahamas and possessing a distinctly non-American accent, there was no way in hell I ever believed that Poitier was from Chicago’s South Side. Mr. Shaun’s performance is more visceral, more angry and ultimately, more realistic than the refined interpretation Mr. Poitier provided for the film. Shaun has a magnetic, masculine energy and there are many times you don’t know whether to be scared of him or to pity him. As he should, Shaun wins the respect of all by the end, but it is hard earned and aligned with the feelings of his family members. This is always a difficult feat for the play to accomplish and here I can happily say that it succeeds.
Dominique Johnson and Jeffrey Rolle Jr.
The most surprising performance comes from Dominique Johnson as Beneatha, Walter’s younger sister. Often times, as in the film, I’ve seen her character played as a flighty teenager, insensitive towards her mother’s struggle and caught up somewhat blindly by the social activism rising up around her. Ms. Johnson’s performance was a bit of a revelation though. Her Beneatha is passionate, radical and full of conviction. All of her scenes with Jeffery Rolle, Jr., who plays an African suitor named Joseph Asagai with overwhelming charm and conviction, are some of the highlights of the entire production. When Asagai drapes a tribal shawl across Benetha and she sees the garment worn properly on her body in the mirror for the first time, you witness a young woman on the verge of a revelation about herself and a history of her bloodline that has been repressed by generations of black slaves in the Americas. You witness in that moment both a beautiful metaphor for the seed of all the social change yet to come and the awakening of a feeling of belonging in a young woman who has desperately been searching for a better idea of who she is. With Rolle Jr. and Ms. Johnson at the wheel, this often-overlooked moment easily became my favorite.
While Angela D. Watson as Lena and Latonya Kitchen as Ruth, Walter’s wife, are clearly both capable actresses, whenever they were left on stage by themselves it felt as though the air had been let out of the tires. Where Gitlin should have been pushing the pace and trimming the fat on the more melodramatic tendencies of the show, she instead let these capable actresses wallow in slow motion, pulling taffy instead of vacuum sealing the drama.
Derek Shaun and Latonya Kitchen.
Ms. Kitchen in particular reveals more than she should to the audience during the first act. She appears so unwell and sick from the moment the play begins that anyone not assuming she is sick (or pregnant as it turns out to be) must not be paying attention. Her physical exasperation is so over the top that the reveal of her pregnancy seems not just anti-climactic but negligent. It is important to play against the stereotypes of character and action in order to appear three-dimensionally human. Gitlin and Kitchen both drop the ball here on that one.
The 1950s apartment set designed by Greg Fritsche is nearly perfect and the lighting by Donny Jackson helps shape our attention just enough during key dramatic points to be noticeable, but not intrusive. Costumes by Donna Fitsche are another high water mark for this production, with every character’s wardrobe perfectly suited to them.
Phie Mura’s sound design was a hair more inspired than many of the mainstage productions I’ve seen, especially with the incorporation of the gramophone into the action.
During the scene where Beneatha puts on an African tribal recording and Walter joins her drunkenly in the play’s most theatrical and surreally rendered moment, the drums move subtly from the gramophone to the theater’s sound system heightening the action and taking the audience away with the characters. It is resourceful moments like these that really make me value the Playhouse in our community.
A Raisin in the Sun deserves to be seen live. It is a powerful, socially woke and relevant work. The south side of Chicago remains an underserved ghetto, black Americans still struggle with assimilation and identity in the face of a predominantly white oligarchy and the working class is unquestionably in a worse place now than it was in 1959. The issues Lorraine Hansberry bravely addresses in A Raisin in the Sun continue to be ones we can relate to, but I see in the new resonance of Beneatha’s character in this production that we are, ever slowly, moving forward. A dream deferred, but not dead.