A Raisin in the Sun
Now Available
Some people are forever turning their noses up at what they call melodrama—a play, they aver, in which misery is piled on misery, crises multiply like rabbits and sentimental tears are shed by the bucket. And, usually, with plenty of violence.
Now take Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun. Yes, the black Younger family on Chicago's South Side have got themselves a pack of troubles. Mother Lena, son Walter, daughter Beneatha, and daughter-in-law Ruth all face difficult dilemmas with no facile solutions. They must make choices with potentially harrowing consequences. And they have cause for tears of pain, of rage and of compassion. But there is, at any rate, no physical violence stemming from vehement, conflicting feelings.
Lena, widowed, comes into a $10,000 premium from her late husband's life insurance. What to do with the windfall? Walter, sick of being a chauffeur to rich white folks, wants to invest in a liquor store, to Lena's horror. Lena has been doing domestic work, and Ruth takes in laundry. Lena's idea for the money is to buy a house where everyone, including sassy grandson Travis, can have a better life. This would suit Ruth too: Pregnant again, she is by way of getting an abortion rather than further overcrowding the Younger apartment.
As for Beneatha, she now sees her dream of becoming a doctor beckoning, and may not have to marry a rich young man she tolerates but doesn't love. She might even choose a young Nigerian grad student, who would take her back to living that African heritage about which she spouts radical bromides. But med school first.
[IMG:R]Problems proliferate. Another black man cheats Walter out of the goodly portion of that ten thousand Lena has given him. Should he make up for it by accepting the white racists' bribe and stop the purchase of the house, and thereby break Lena's and Ruth's hearts?
On paper, this may sound like the ripest kind of melodrama. But what if the misery is genuine, the crises are credible, and the tears not showily jerked, but earned from realistic predicaments, socially and emotionally justified?
And what if Hansberry knew her characters intimately, and empathized with them without exaggeration and posturing? What, above all, if she found the attitudes and moves appropriate to each of them? What if, first and last, she created language suited to each of them—neither so shopworn as to make for standard boulevard fare, nor so clever and recherché as to make it sound excogitated rather than lived?
Hansberry has done all that, and never mind if her subsequent efforts misfired; this one lives on stage, and lives again in a TV-movie adaptation starring most of the cast of the hit 2004 Broadway revival. Kenny Leon, who directed both stage and TV versions, proves equally apt with both.
We had been wondering whether Sean Combs, no professional actor, could handle the demanding role of Walter Younger. Well, he could. He may pout a bit too much, but he makes those pouts work for him. And when he had to hope, exult, despair or show a gentler side, by Diddy, he did it. Phylicia Rashad, who won a Tony for her performance, is a commanding but never overbearing Lena; Sanaa Lathan, a Beneatha as winning as she is pretty. Everyone else, too, is up to snuff.
But the most riveting performance is the Ruth of Audra McDonald, which won the actress her third Tony. Do not think of her as merely a strong-voiced musical-comedy actress, although there's nothing merely about that either. She proves herself a consummate dramatic diva, with an extraordinary emotional compass and unerring command of expression, gesture, and utterance. No grandstanding, no scene-stealing, just the shortest direct route to our hearts.
The DVD release has a couple of worthwhile special features, but nothing is so special as this abundantly realized piece of ensemble work.
John Simon is the New York theater critic for Bloomberg News.