A Raisin in the Sun  

Reviewed by Dana Martin 
A Noise Within 
Through April 8th 

RECOMMENDED 

A Raisin in the Sun, a drama about an African-American family living in Chicago’s South Side in the 1950’s, broods with righteous anger. Prolific playwright Lorraine Hansberry fearlessly and flawlessly shines a light on racial prejudice and economic and social inequality. The play, which premiered on Broadway in 1959, seeks to answer the question posed in Langston Hughes’ poem Harlem: “What happens to a dream deferred?/ Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?” A Noise Within undertakes to stage this American classic with courage and guts.

The story revolves around a housing dispute, a personal experience the playwright and her family endured. When Hansberry was a teenager, her father Carl filed a lawsuit that went to the Supreme Court after white neighbors tried to legally force his family to move out of the neighborhood. 

The family in the play, the Youngers, share a cramped tenement apartment that’s crawling with bugs and falling apart. Walter Lee (Ben Cain) has an audacious, seemingly impossible dream: owning a liquor store, which he believes will break the binds of poverty and provide economic and social freedom. Family matriarch Lena (Saundra McCain) receives a $10,000 insurance settlement, but she is morally opposed to his idea and refuses to lend Walter the money.

Instead, Lena puts a down payment on a house in Clybourne Park, an all-white neighborhood in South Chicago, and then entrusts Walter Lee with the remainder, hoping to catapult him into manhood. But Walter impetuously loses the money — including his sister Beneatha’s college tuition — on a bad investment, just as a “welcome committee” representative arrives to make clear that the Youngers aren’t welcome in Clybourne Park.

Saundra McCain is strong as matriarch Lena Younger, at once a towering relic and a lovable granny. Sarah Hollis portrays an indignant, intelligent Beneatha, Walter Lee’s outspoken, college-bound younger sister. Ben Cain delivers a potent and unassuming performance as the boyish, reluctant head-of-the-household, Walter Lee. He represents a very American entrepreneurial spirit with a hint of revolution. Toya Turner delivers the most captivating performance of the evening as Ruth Younger, Walter Lee’s sweet, long-suffering wife who dreams of a home of her own. Her performance is excellent; she’s vulnerable, immediate, complex and captivating.

Director Gregg T. Daniel guides the production with a steady, compassionate hand. But lighting designer Stacy McKenney Norr’s use of frequent blackouts gives the play an antiquated feeling and creates clumsy transitions. Costumes by Garry Lennon are clean and crisp. Stephanie Kerley Schwartz designs a set that provides many playing spaces for the play’s action, but it feels too big and roomy for a cramped apartment. 

Written at a time when the country was still deeply segregated, A Raisin in the Sun is authentic in its depiction of the African American experience of everyday life, so inextricably bound up with the injustice of racial discrimination and the struggle for equality. The first play by an African American woman to be produced on Broadway — Hansberry was just 29 years old —  it is still relevant today. Hansberry’s story and that of her family continues to shine a light on the truth,

A Noise Within, 3352 E Foothill Blvd., Pasadena;  through April 8th; (626) 356-3121 or anoisewithin.org.; Running time: two hours and 45 minutes with a 15 minute intermission.