Part II:
A RAISIN IN THE SUN
by Lorraine Hansberry
Directed by Robert O’Hara
Public Theater
Reviewed by David Spencer
When I attended the revival of A Raisin in the Sun at the Public, fairly late in its extended run, having avoided most of the publicity and press briefing info—I have no hard-and-fast rule about that, but when it seems appropriate, or just wise, I like to go in without “pre-installed” coming attractions—I wondered what Lorraine Hansberry’s play was doing there.
The Public Theater has championed diversity ever since its inception: I remember vividly, how, when my commissioned colloquial English language adaptation of La Bohème (my first show) was produced there in 1984, director Wilford Leach adamantly insisted on having African Americans in the cast—which gave us the gifts of Keith David and Carol Dennis—and the theatre company’s mandate has only become more broadly encompassing since. Their featuring a play by an African American playwright was unremarkable.
But this was different.
Shakespeare and the odd other rule-breaking classic aside (stuff by Bertolt Brecht, for example), revivals of American Traditional, that have entered the standard repertoire and been revived many times, are simply not their usual fare. And for all that Ms Hansberry’s 1959 play broke through in a major way—using the travails of one working class family to dramatize a cross-section of black American society—it had been filmed, revived in NYC several times, most of those revivals video’d for television, musicalized on Broadway and audio-recorded twice for BBC Radio. I daresay it may be one of the most revisited 20th century American plays of all time.
Why the Public?
I was to find out.
But not until what’s presented as the second act. (Like many classic American plays, A Raisin in the Sun was originally presented in three acts, but has enough scenes that it can be divided differently for modern audiences [and stage crews who would otherwise be paid overtime] more accustomed to two.
For all of Act One director Robert O’Hara’s treatment of the play is straightforward and affecting, with an excellent cast. Small innovation: when Lena (Tonya Pinkins) remembers her late husband, he’s conjured (Calvin Dutton); he enters like a ghost, appropriates for his own voice the lines she remembers him saying, then leaves.
His spirit is still felt. The life insurance money from his passing will move through the story like a wave.
Okay.
Not a necessary amplification, but not a horrible one either. It does no harm, it does the same work from another angle. Fair enough.
Then in Act Two, Walter Lee (Francois Battiste) and Ruth (Mandi Masden) have an argument…but end it by holding onto each other, still clinging to their love despite the tensions. Well played, traditionally presented.
But they don’t stop making out.
Their hands are all over each other, just about ripping their clothes off but not quite. They disappear into the bedroom for that. And then we hear heavy breathing and the sounds of passionate sex. Up to and including climax.
And they continue their discussion, per the text; but offstage.
Heavily, loudly, incongruously miked.
A desire to show us how powerful a component sex is in keeping a financially stressed, occupationally oppressed, domestically troubled couple together?
Okaaayyyyy.
Sometime thereafter comes the scene that holds what might be described as Walter Lee’s big aria. Here’s the setup.
Mama Lena has used a portion of her deceased husband’s $10,000 life insurance money to put a down payment on a private house in a suburban neighborhood. A white neighborhood that has sent an “association” representative (Jesse Pennington) to finesse the family into reconsidering, by offering more money than Lena paid. The Youngers refuse.
Giving serious consideration to her son’s desire to rise up from being a chauffeur and co-own a business (a liquor store), Lena gives him the balance of the insurance money; some to invest as he chooses; the rest for the education of his sister Beneatha (Paige Gilbert). But of course, he will invest all of it.
And will subsequently learn, humiliatingly, in front of his family—from Bobo, second partner in the deal—that a man he trusted as the third partner has scammed them both, absconding with their money. Walter Lee runs out.
In the next scene, Walter Lee returns to report—this is the aria—that he has called the association man, preparatory to taking his offer. If they’re willing to pay out far more money than he lost, he will, he says, shuck and jive and massa it up and he will be fine doing it, just fine!
Which is of course exactly the opposite of what he’s truly feeling. The speech becomes more and more a primal scream of rage, frustration and self-abasement.
In private with Lena, Beneatha rails against Walter Lee for his foolishness in partnering with a man that, she asserts, his grade-school age son would have known not to trust; but Lena cautions her that when a man has hit rock bottom and has nothing left…that’s the time he most needs compassion and a family’s love.
At length, Walter Lee does indeed find the inner resolve to tell the association man that they’ve decided to move into their house after all…the movers are not sent away…and the play ends with the Younger family bidding farewell their apartment.
The message is clear. There are challenges, dangers, bigotry…but the beginning of progress is doing the right thing…and having faith that the right thing will inspire others to continue it forward. It’s not a happy ending. But it’s a hopeful one.
That’s the play as originally presented.
Now let’s back up a bit.
Here’s what happens at the Public Theater. Which answers the question why there. The oft-used phrase “bold new interpretation.”
None of the added details I’m about to describe are in the text of the play. To the best of my knowledge, none have been implemented in any prior production. Note too that the dialogue of the play remains exactly as written; what alters the messaging is behavior.
Starting with the scene where Walter Lee arrives to say he has called the association man, Lena’s entrance—which is to say the entrance of Ms. Pinkins as Lena—indicates that the loss of money has put a strain on her that has affected her health. Her gait emphasizes her heft, one foot drags a little, her left arm is clutched against her side, and her left hand is shaking. She is both a woman of formidable strength and a woman staving off a major cardiac event by force of will.
For the entire remainder of the play, the compromised gait, the arm-side clutch, the shaking hand will continue.
Walter Lee begins his aria. As his agitation rises, he turns away from his family and we begin to realize he is now talking to us. He has broken the fourth wall and he is consciously acknowledging the presence of the audience. The speech is becoming an indictment. When he talks of the papers he will sign to get the yes-massa money, he pulls out of his back pocket…the Playbill of the production. As if its pages are those legal papers. The others onstage follow him with their eyes but do not themselves break the illusion of place. As Walter Lee’s speech reaches its conclusion, he steps back into naturalistic space, adjusting his focus, tacitly “closing” the broken fourth wall.
Okay. No guessing now. The socio-political purpose is unambiguous.
Don’t anybody believe you’re off the hook, that you’re abstracted from a 1959 setting, that these are only words in a play, that racism isn’t as alive and well as it was then, that if you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem.
But it’s a hat on top of a hat.
The play already does that work.
Presented traditionally, all of that is apparent in our witness of a man who has descended into such despair that he can trumpet an utter lack of self-respect as if it’s an advantage. And he hammers it with increasing insistence front of his family. In the context, there can be nothing sadder or more profoundly an indictment. But it’s also all wrapped up with guilt at his own bad judgment. At the trust he himself betrayed. Nothing about it is simple. It’s a stunning and masterful portrait of a man and his world breaking down.
The point of identification—just as with Death of a Salesman—is that this set of emotions, this devastating confrontation with limitations, both imposed from without and of one’s own making—could erupt in any of us, when something essential to survival, to self-image, to dignity, is snatched out of the grasp you thought you had on it.
There’s no looking away from Walter Lee’s humanity. And that’s what makes the point about the ravages of racism.
But when Francois Battiste breaks the wall at the Public…something really interesting happens. An audible audience ripple. “Oh!” As in: Wow, he’s talking to us.
However one may feel about the choice—and obviously I’m not a proponent, but even if I were—one thing is undeniable: It yanks you out of the play. You’re suddenly aware of an actor, a change of lighting, a director at work and all kinds of details you shouldn’t be consciously noticing. Is Tonya Pinkins’ hand still shaking? Paige Gilbert is kind of in Battiste’s light. Will she be in on this?
Let’s put this device aside, though.
Let’s jump to that section where Mama is advising Beneatha about the value of compassion for those you love in their darkest moments.
With her arm clutched to her side and her hand shaking and her gait compromised.
The two actresses are constrained to the text as written.
Which means at no time can Beneatha say, “Mom, you have to sit down, now. One way or another, we have to get you to the hospital.”
Would a doctor come to the house? An ambulance? Could Walter Lee get use of a car? Would the hospital see to Lena in a timely fashion? In a racist environment, all such questions lead to scenarios worthy of dramatizing. But because Lorraine Hansberry didn’t do so, Beneatha has to spend the rest of the play not noticing. And one other thing about Beneatha.
Her big dream is helping people.
As a doctor.
I’ll say it again: She’s studying to be a doctor.
If Beneatha is unable to notice that her mother is having a heart attack, we’re being lied to.
And there’s the tell that when the production flips into its “bold new interpretation” mode, it’s a betrayal of the play from that point forward.
And it’s not just the messaging: it’s the collision of styles. Which is of course entirely conscious; the desire is to “shake up” traditional expectations and make the audience consider the play and its themes in a new way.
But the collision can’t be aligned with the play.
It doesn’t come from within.
And the play fights it.
And that’s why it’s a conscious mistake.
Theme-splaining always pulls focus and undercuts its own purpose.
Here’s the good news.
While Mr. O’Hara’s impositions ultimately run counter to the author’s intention and the play’s organic life…the play still generally supports its actors very effectively. And until that second act pivot point, what we’ve been watching is A Raisin in the Sun as well-presented as I’ve ever seen it. The cast is swell. In that wise, O’Hara has not failed. He seems, in spite of following a self-defeating muse, an excellent director.
At the very least, and somewhat paradoxically, he has managed to preserve the author’s tone. However misguided the new stuff, he at least loves the play.
Which made the production, just as paradoxically, worthwhile; especially if you’d never seen A Raisin in the Sun before.
But there are times when revisionist thinking reveals something quite different.
And that brings us to the revival of the musical 1776…
Link to Part Three: 1776
Link to Part One: Death of a Salesman