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.

Theatre review: Homos, or Everyone in America

A low-key meme in 2018 seems to be gay plays that engage with the legacy of Angels in America; The Inheritance was of course a two-part epic, while one of the characters in Jordan Seavey’s Homos, or Everyone in America refers to living in “a post-gay fantasia,” a nod to the subtitle of Tony Kushner’s play. If Seavey intends to look at as far-reaching an examination of gay identity as those plays, he’s got a much more modest canvas in mind, as his one-act play has four characters, but for the vast majority of its running time is a two-hander. A New York couple known only as The Writer (Harry McEntire) and The Academic (Tyrone Huntley) meet online, fall for each other quickly in real life, have a few happy if combative years together, break up, try to remain friends and, after a brutal reminder that homophobia hasn’t gone away even in an America with equal marriage rights, finally find a relationship that works for them.