Lorraine Hansberry broke new ground in 1959, the first Black playwright and the youngest American to win a New York Critics’ Circle award.
A Raisin in the Sun was the first show staged on Broadway by an African-American woman. Sixty-five years later, her play still engages and remains relevant.
This was a play I had heard a lot about but never seen performed. Hansberry was heavily involved in the civil rights movement, grappling with questions of how black people can overcome the legacy of slavery and colonialism in order to forge their own way in society.
The play centres around the lives of the Younger family, living together in a dilapidated Chicago apartment. The family is led by a feisty matriarch, Lena, played by Doreene Blackstock. The death of her husband has been bittersweet, depositing hope alongside grief as the family wait for his life insurance policy to pay out.
The play’s title is taken from a Langston Hughes poem. The poem was read at the beginning of the performance. His musings on dreams deferred suggests they might wither, like a raisin in the sun, but ends with the suggestion they might explode. So it is with the Younger family whose dreams are capable of leading them to despair or revolt.
Lena and her daughter in law Ruth, played by Cash Holland, dream of moving into a house. Walter Lee (Solomon Israel), husband to Ruth and son to Lena, wants to run his own business. His sister Beneatha (Josephine-Fransilja Brookman) aspires to train as a doctor. While their younger brother Travis, played by Josh Ndlovu in the performance I watched, has yet to form a dream of the future, but the whole family hopes he will see a better life.
Money, qualifications and the ability to assimilate into white dominated society are all held up as tools which might enable dreams to be realised. Alongside the politics of race, gender impacts on the ability and of individuals to realise their dreams. Pregnancy, sexism and gender stereotyping impact the lives of female characters. Beneatha has two suitors, both who propose marriage rather than career as dream fulfilment.
George (Gilbert Kyem Junior) is a college student whose comfortable lifestsyle makes him oblivious to the struggles faced by Beneatha and her family, prompting the comment that ‘the only people more snobbish than rich white people are rich black people.’ Joseph (Kenneth Omale) understands the need for change but believes that she would accompany him to Africa and become part of African independence. Beneatha’s suspicion that independence will change little still strikes a chord.
When, in the second act, Lena puts down a deposit on a property in an all-white neighbourhood, discrimination becomes more palpable, Mr. Lindner (Jonah Russell) arrives at the Youngers’ apartment from the Clybourne Park Improvement Association, offering money to stop them moving there, an event that echoed events in Hansbury’s own life. The family do not want to be like white people but they do want the right to live in the same level of comfort as white people.
This was a relatively long play. It was eleven when I left the theatre, and dialogue heavy. Yet, I was surprised when I saw the time. Clearly, Tinuke Craig’s direction was well paced. Dialogue was witty, well delivered and packed a punch, despite being written in a different era and country. The family tribulations are underlaid with love and support, despite their different motivations. I did find Beneatha came across as spoilt in a section where she was accused of constantly perusing different musical or sporting interests. Then I reminded myself how new it would be for many women, let alone black women, to have these opportunities in the 1950s. Why not experiment?
The staging didn’t feel claustrophobic, despite being set in one room of the apartment. The set design by Cécile Trémolières Involves translucent coverings that enable actors to be in rooms at both wings and walk upstairs. The onstage action was strengthened by offstage vignettes in these spaces.
The production marks fifty years of Headlong Theatre and is a co-production with Leeds Playhouse, Nottingham Playhouse and Lyric Hammersmith, and will also be touring to Oxford Playhouse. The choice of production shows confidence, reviving a play older than the company. I went away wondering what Lorraine Hansberry might have achieved if she had lived to be fifty and not been struck down by pancreatic cancer aged thirty-four. She will remain immortalised in the lyrics of her close friend Nina Simone as ‘Young, gifted and black’.
A Raisin in the Sun is at Leeds Playhouse until 28 September.
https://www.leedsplayhouse.org.uk/event/a-raisin-in-the-sun/
Main image: (l to r) Solomon Israel (Walter Lee), Jonah Russell (Karl), Cash Holland (Ruth), Adiel Magaji (Travis) and Doreene Blackstock (Lena)
Photography by Ikin Yum.
