|
|
|
Last Updated: Oct 21st, 2007 - 09:55:08 |
The genius of Lorraine Hansberry’s “A Raisin in the Sun” lies in its timelessness. Beautifully staged by the African Continuum Theatre Company (at the Atlas Performing Arts Center’s Sprenger Theatre in Washington, D.C.), her moving treatment of the Younger family’s fight to rise above the oppression of their present lives is as fresh and powerful today as it was when the play debuted on Broadway in 1959.
Director Jennifer L. Nelson’s retelling of the Pulitzer Prize- winning play beautifully pays homage to Hansberry’s masterpiece.
Living in Chicago, in a shoebox-sized apartment shared with roaches, Walter Lee Younger (Jefferson A. Russell) complains to his wife Ruth (Deidra LaWan Starnes) that she’s been too busy looking down while cleaning other people’s clothes and blind to his upwardly mobile vision of success and wealth. Walter Lee is the Black everyman who wears his pride on his sleeve and a cap on his head as he chauffer’s the rich to work and play. Ruth is the glue, working hard as the diplomat to keep the family together while trying not to break down under the weight of her own heavy load.
Meanwhile, Walter Lee is seething underneath his ambition-fueled bravado because his son Travis has to sleep on the couch every night, and both his wife Ruth and mother Lena (the wonderful Jewell Robinson) do exhausting domestic jobs. He trades barbs with his sister Beneatha (Audra Alise Polk), an idealistic aspiring doctor who dismisses Walter Lee’s money-making ideas when he tells her she should just ditch medical school “and get married.”
The family dynamic gets turned on its head as the recently-widowed Lena waits on the delivery of a $10,000 check from her late husband’s insurance company. While everyone in the family is excited about the Lena’s new-found wealth, Walter Lee’s eyes narrow with greed as he the thinks about how he would use that money.
After the check arrives the Younger living room starts to look like a boxing ring as Walter Lee hurls verbal punches—some of them below the belt—at his mother, wife and sister. He feels entitled, and believes the money should go to securing his partnership in the purchase of a liquor store. Lena wants to buy a house, and pay for Beneatha’s college education.
Director Nelson does a remarkable job of making the actors in this fine cast connect to the audience. Starnes stands out in her portrayal of Ruth as more than just another strong Black woman. She allows the audience a view of a woman who loves her family and will fight for them, but is also vulnerable and disappointed. She works overtime doing the high-wire act, balancing the warring factions in the family and her own self-preservation.
Hansberry presents another interesting observation on internal struggle faced by Black folks as they move up the middle-class ladder, using Beneatha’s two suitors to make her point. George Murchison (Brandon White) is the elitist Black frat-boy who speaks the King’s English, looks down his nose at Walter Lee when he offers George a beer, and reminds Beneatha that dressing appropriately is of the utmost importance. Her Nigerian suitor Joseph Asagai (Dallas Darttanian Miller) introduces Beneatha to the culture of the motherland, shows her how to drape her body in an African print, and inspires her to “hold on to the substance of truth.” She also discards her “assimilationist” hairstyle and cuts her hair to reveal, much to Murchison’s horror, a close-cropped afro.
After Lena decides to split the money three ways—between the purchase of a home in the suburbs, Beneatha’s education and Walter Lee’s investment opportunity, obstructions in the form of dishonesty and fear threaten the Younger’s dream, and foretell tragedy.
The title of the play comes from Langston’s Hughes poem “A Dream Deferred.” When the dream is deferred, he asks, Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun? Or does it explode?
There are some explosions of humiliation and anger in the Younger house during the play’s final act. Yet when the smoke clears, the seeds of healing and transformation manifest, particularly in Walter Lee’s psyche as he finally takes his rightful place in the family.
In the end, Hansberry’s inspiring work reminds us all that while much has changed since 1959, there is still much to be done. And that is why “A Raisin in the Sun” is such an important cultural icon that must be produced and seen again and again.
“A Raisin In The Sun” runs through January 7, 2007 at the Atlas Performing Arts Center’s Sprenger theatre, 1333 H. Street NE, Washington DC. Tickets can be purchased online at www.africancontinuumtheatre.com, at the Atlas box office or by phone at 202-399-7993.
© Copyright 2006 SeeingBlack.com
Top of Page
|
|
|
|
