Lorraine Hansberry’s 1959 play, A Raisin in the Sun, explores through one family, the issues of racism, oppressive poverty, materialism, murmurs of the oncoming Civil Rights upheavals and young women choosing their own path. In an electrifying revival at the Ethel Barrymore Theater, the theater where it premiered 55 years ago, A Raisin in the Sunagain confronts the consequences of a dream deferred.
It is the years after WWII. The five members of the Younger family live in a cramped tenement on the South side of Chicago. Right now, they face a decision that might ease their burdens or may well crush the family. The focus is on an insurance check due to the matriarch, Mama (Lena), played by LaTanya Richardson Jackson (Joe Turner's Come and Gone), but everyone has personal plans on how to spend it. Lena's son, Walter Lee, a chauffeur played by Denzel Washington (Fences), believes that investing in a liquor store with three neighborhood friends, will make him rich. Money, he believes, is life.
Directed by Kenny Leon, Washington delivers a splendid interpretation of Walter Lee with mature perspective. No stranger to the stage, his performance is confident and multifaceted. He moves with a restless grace, frustration seething within, then erupting with brief flare-ups before pushing back inside until a final decisive outburst that comes almost too late. He blames his failures on racism but also on the women in his life: "`I got to change my life, I’m choking to death, baby!’” And his woman say, 'Your eggs is getting cold!'"
Washington places himself as part of an ensemble, with individualities that mesh and clash. Richardson as Mama Lena is pious, strict and devoted to her family. She wants her son to be the man her husband was, but she does not feel Walter Lee is responsible. She wants to use the money for a down-payment on a small house where, like her ailing plant on the windowsill, her family will get sunlight and bloom. Her grandson. Travis, can have a backyard. In a winning Broadway debut, Bryce Clyde Jenkins as Travis sleeps on the living room couch and has his adoring grandmother wrapped around his finger.
Mama also wants to put money aside to help her younger daughter, Beneatha, get an education. Anika Noni Rose (Caroline, or Change) sparkles as the ambitious and energetic activist, Beneatha, determined to get more out of life. "Listen, I'm going to be a doctor. I'm not worried about who I'm going to marry yet – if I ever get married." At one point, Beneatha flippantly tells her righteous mother, "There simply is no God! There is only Man, and it’s he who makes miracles!” Mama, firm and furious, demands Beneatha repeat, "In my mother’s house, there is still God.”
Walter Lee's wife, Ruth (Sophie Okonedo), bone-tired and newly pregnant, has given up on dreams. Looking frail, Okonedo (“Hotel Rwanda”) moves with the slow fatigue of someone always pushing herself from one chore to another, yearning for relief from the rat-infested tenement and the poverty that threatens her family. She loves Walter Lee but feels neglected and is tired of his pipe dreams. "Honey, you never say nothing new. I listen to you every day, every night, and every morning and you never say nothing new." When Lena tells them she bought a house, Ruth's joy is palpable as she raises her arms, crying, "Praise God!"
The supporting characters are precisely crafted. David Cromer is cajoling in his visit as the manipulative representative of the all-white neighborhood where the Youngers plan to move. Beneatha has two suitors, George Marchison (Jason Darden), from a rich conservative family, and Joseph Asagai (Sean Patrick Thomas) from Nigeria, who fascinates her with tales of her African roots.
A familiar presence in August Wilson's plays, Stephen McKinley Henderson makes a brief essential appearance as Walter Lee's fellow investor, Bobo, who shifts the story in a new direction. Kenny Leon's seamless direction is well focused and dramatically paced. Vital also is Mark Thompson's tenement set, with the bathroom in the hallway, as well-worn and tired as the rest of the family. For the women's costumes and hair, Ann Roth designed simple dresses and comfortable shoes with Mia M. Neal hair styles of the '50's. Between scenes Bradford Marsalis arranged for bebop riffs, a nice period touch.
A Raisin in the Sun won Lorraine Hansberry a New York Drama Critics Award and proved a chef-d'ouevre for the playwright who died at age 34 in 1965. Five decades later, with Denzel Washington's prize-worthy performance and the flawless ensemble, the work resonates, forcing both blacks and whites to recognize the consequences of a dream deferred.
