Theatre review: A Raisin in the Sun

As the first play by a black female writer ever to be staged on Broadway, Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun gets an automatic entry into the history books, and has inspired at least two response plays that I've seen, the farcical Clybourne Park and darker Beneatha's Place. So it feels well overdue to get the chance to see the original, and in Tinuke Craig's production the 65-year-old play proves itself worth the attention for more than just getting there first. In an overcrowded Chicago apartment that shares its bathroom with several other families, the Youngers are led by matriarch Lena (Doreene Blackstock,) although her son Walter Lee (Solomon Israel) would dispute who gets to be head of the family. Their lifestyle is about to change, although they don't know quite how: A $10,000 cheque from her husband's life insurance is due in the post any day now, but Lena has so far been tight-lipped about what she plans to do with it.

Walter Lee is adamant that he should get the whole sum so that he can invest it in a liquor store with two friends, but his wife Ruth (Cash Holland) is unusually low-key about everything that's going on and his sister Beneatha (Joséphine-Fransilja Brookman) has ambitions to become a doctor, and the windfall could fund her medical school training.

The title comes from a Langston Hughes poem about "a dream deferred," and that's something a lot of the characters are dealing with: Walter Lee in particular is downright aggressive in his belief that his dream of being a captain of industry shouldn't be deferred any longer, but ultimately the cheque is in Lena's name, and she wants to try and give everyone what they want - but her first priority is moving out of their cramped apartment, and she ends up using $3,000 of the money as a deposit for their own home. In a twist that dominates the second act, the best bargain she could find was in the hitherto all-white suburb of Clybourne Park.

Craig's production takes its time but does result in us feeling like we really know the characters and their situation. It's not particularly surprising that Kwame Kwei-Armah chose Beneatha as the character he gave her own spin-off play, as she's a firebrand whom Brookman makes an early audience favourite: An outspoken activist for civil rights with a naïve, borderline-patronising interest in reconnecting to her African roots, she can get away with most things but her atheism is one step too far for her fearsome mother.

Beneatha's also got a modern woman's approach to men, currently dating two she's not particularly interested in but both of whom could open doors for her in different ways: Joseph Asagai (Kenneth Omole) is a sweet-natured Nigerian who plans to return there after he graduates, while George (Gilbert Kyem Jnr) is a wealthy and pretentious student from an influential family, who somehow manages to be the most obnoxious man in a play that has Walter Lee in it.

In fact most of Hansberry's men show themselves up in a bad light (the sole white character is Jonah Russell's Karl, the "welcoming committee" from Clybourne Park whose welcome is about as warm as you'd expect,) and it's interesting to see that Broadway's first play by a black woman got there with a markedly female point of view. Men's sense of entitlement clouds a lot of what happens to the family, and the only element that felt old-fashioned to me in the sexual politics was Walter Lee being allowed to dominate the big dramatic speeches of the second act, and getting his redemption a bit too easily, in light of what he's done.

The other thing that feels very much of its time structurally is both acts trailing off instead of ending on big dramatic moments, which contributes to it feeling a bit too long. But other than that Headlong's production is a real success, balancing its drama with comedy - Oliver Dunkley* as Walter and Ruth's son Travis has nicely natural comic timing in his reactions. Cécile Trémolières' set does lay on the grubbiness of the flat, shall we say, a bit thick, but it does also contain a subtle but effective final reveal of the world Lena's stepping into at the end.

A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry is booking until the 2nd of November at the Lyric Hammersmith; then continuing on tour to Nottingham.

Running time: 2 hours 55 minutes including interval.

Photo credit: Ikin Yum.

*the Lyric's website has neglected to credit the child cast for the show, but from a bit of an online search I think we got Dunkley in tonight's performance