Reviewed by Judy Richter
Hope is scarce, but now the family has some in Lorraine Hansberry's "A Raisin in the Sun," presented by California Shakespeare Theater. The matriarch, Lena Younger (Margo Hall), receives a $10,000 check (big money in those days) from her late husband's life insurance. It's enough that maybe some dreams can come true.
Lena dreams of moving the family to a home of their own. Her college student daughter, Beneatha (Nemuna Ceesay), wants to become a doctor. Her son, Walter Lee (Marcus Henderson), wants to become rich by investing in a liquor store. His wife, Ruth (Ryan Nicole Peters), wants to revive their crumbling marriage and provide a better future for their 10-year-old son, Travis (Zion Richardson).
These dreams come in a racially divided society, one that has left Walter Lee, who works as a white man's chauffeur, frustrated and angry. He takes out his anger on the women in his family, especially Ruth, and tries to escape through alcohol.
When Lena makes a down payment on a house in a predominantly white neighborhood, Clybourne Park, a representative of its homeowner association, Karl Lindner (Liam Vincent), calls on them. In one of the highlights of this production directed by Patricia McGregor, the family's politeness on the assumption that he is welcoming them to the neighborhood gradually turns to dismay and anger when they learn that the association will buy their house at a considerable sum to keep them out. They send him on his way.
In the meantime, Lena has given Walter Lee the $6,500 left after the down payment. She tells him to set aside $2,000 for Beneatha's education and to put the rest into a checking account for himself. Instead, he gives all of the money to one of his partners in the liquor store plan, but the man disappears.
This play, which opens Cal Shakes' 40th anniversary season, is historic in its own right because it was the first play by a black woman to be produced on Broadway. It also depicts a sorry chapter in American history that is still ongoing despite numerous advances in racial relations since 1959.
Director McGregor has elicited nicely nuanced performances, especially by Hall as the indomitable Lena and Peters as Walter's long-suffering wife. Ceesay makes Beneatha an intelligent young woman who's searching for more meaning in her life. Richardson is believable as young Travis. Beneatha's two boyfriends and fellow students, the wealthy, pretentious George and politically astute Joseph from Nigeria, are well played by York Walker and Rotimi Agbabiaka (who hails from Nigeria), respectively. Vincent is suitably officious as Karl, the white neighborhood emissary who keeps referring to the family as "you people."
Henderson's performance as Walter Lee is problematic because he makes the character so agitated most of the time.
The set is by Dede M. Ayite with ambient lighting by Gabe Maxson and sound by Will McCandless. Costumes are by Katherine Nowacki.
The play's title comes from "Harlem," by black poet Langston Hughes, who wrote, "What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?"
In the case of the Younger family, it doesn't, thanks to the hope evinced by the ending.