A Raisin In The Sun - Royal Exchange - 01/02/10 by Julia Taylor

Drama should convey emotion be it humour or pathos. The award-winning play, A Raisin in the Sun, directed by Michael Buffong, has both. But, for me, it is the pathos that comes out top. Some people left in tears. The talented cast need no praise from me for, on press night, they are rewarded by a standing ovation, and that says everything.

A Raisin in the Sun is set over fifty years ago The attitudes of Americans towards black people have changed since then when it was an uphill struggle for a black person to find even menial work.

The play is about the aspirations of those citizens in the 1950s and has won a place in history as the first play by an African American, (Lorraine Hansberry) to appear on Broadway. The name comes from a line in a Langston Hughes’ poem. It reads “What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?”

It is an apt title. For the play is about the dreams of the Younger family in their cockroach-ridden tenement home in Chicago whose ‘raisins’ refuse to wither despite white prejudice.

Their matriarch is Lena, a devout church goer, who receives an insurance windfall from her late husband and wants to use it to move to the posh part of town. The part is putty in the hands of Starletta DuPois making her UK stage debut after playing a different role in an Emmy award-winning TV movie version.

She dominates her family, gathering them into her ample bosom even though they have their own ideas about how the money should be spent. Her son, Walter, wants to buy a liquor store and her daughter, Beneatha, longs to become a doctor.

Beneatha is overpowered by her chauvinist brother who thinks she should settle for nursing or, better still, get wed. Tracy Ifeachor portrays her as a free thinker who falls for Nigerian, Joseph Asagai. Played well by Damola Adelaja, he, too, has dreams. He wants to set up a new, post-colonial Nigeria.

In an unforgettable performance, Ray Fearon portrays Walter as aggressive and money obsessed. He sometimes treats his wife (Jenny Jules) badly but eventually discovers that love of family is more important than anything.

They all suffer when Karl Lindner(Tom Hodgkins), a pushy white representative of the community where they hope to live denigrates them when he says they are not welcome in his neighbourhood.

The cast draw us into their world as they share their aspirations and react to those of other family members. Sadly most of their hopes do not materialise but they do move to a better area and who knows what might happen after that?

Would they ever have imagined that half a century later, a young African American from their part of town would become the President of the United States of America? I rank this play, along with Kes, at the Royal Exchange Theatre some time ago, one of the best productions I have seen anywhere.