BY ALUN MONTGOMERY
There may be no more time honored way to
celebrate Black History Month in the theater world
than to mount a production of A Raisin in the Sun,
Lorraine Hansberry’s landmark work in American
theater.
Or so they’d have you believe. Drag this old
warhorse out? Again? Yes, again. And with a fresh
new treatment courtesy of the Limelight Theatre.
Often when you mention the prospect, theater
artists and patrons alike furrow their brows, purse
their lips, and nod their heads in one mass genufl
ection of respect and solemnity. Audiences of all
ethnicities seem afraid to admit they just don’t get
it; they should love this play, and yet it leaves them
wondering why.
The play was fi rst produced in 1959, several
years after the US Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board
of Education, yet before the real momentum of
the Civil Rights movement had found its voice and
power. Consequently, many of us are uncomfortable
with just where and how this piece should fi t into the
popular consciousness. Well, a little respect, and
even less solemnity, goes a long way.
In the very capable hands of veteran director
Patsy Butler and her cast and crew of journeymen
performers and technicians, this production
just crackles. Apparently, the company didn’t get
the word that they were supposed to be doubled
over in piety—they simply took ownership of the
playwright’s words and, informing and infusing them
with their own stagecraft, brought their characters
and the story to life.
Arriving in Chicago’s South Side in the 1950s,
the Younger family struggles for survival with poverty,
racism, and family confl icts tugging at them at
every turn. The play begins early one Friday morning—
Ruth (Roberta Burke) sets the family wheel
in motion, getting breakfast ready for her 10-year
old son Travis (Caray Sparrow) and her chauffeur
husband Willie Lee (Patrick Robinson). The three are
soon joined by Willie’s sister Beneatha (Song Marshall),
an aspiring medical student, and Mama Lena
(Melody Jackson), the family matriarch.
It’s a day like most others, with one exception:
Mama is anxiously awaiting her late husband’s
$10,000 insurance check. She wants to use the
money for a suburban home for the family, away
from their ramshackle tenement and the city’s woes;
she’d even like to use a portion of it to fund daughter
Beneatha’s medical studies.
Beneatha, a spirited college student, is full of
youthful idealism and enamored with her African
heritage. She is courted by two suitors: handsome,
wealthy George Murchison (played to self-absorbed
perfection by Derek Hankerson), who promises
security and status though belittling Beneatha’s
independent ideas; and Joseph Asagai (convincingly
portrayed with a spot-on dialect by Lawrence Davis),
a Nigerian student who awakens Beneatha’s fascination
with her heritage.
Meanwhile, Willie has grand plans of his own:
to combine the family money with that of two partners
in order to buy a liquor store. It’s his ticket to
success—wealth, respect, the American Dream
itself.
Mama announces to the family that she has
purchased a house in an upwardly mobile, all-white
enclave with what turns out to be some rather
restrictive covenants. While she is away from the
apartment, the family is visited by a member of the
community’s welcoming committee, a smarmy Karl
Linder (played with just the right blend of irony and
earnestness by James Bennett). Linder shares with
them the wishes of their prospective neighbors to
“preserve the quality of their community”; as the
neighbors’ spokesman, he offers to buy them out in
order to keep them out.
After angrily refusing to comply, Willie sends
Linder on his way. Once he tells his mother of the
meeting’s outcome, she agrees to let him invest the
money as he sees fi t. Now more determined than
ever, he sets about to put his dream in motion—only
there are shattering events lying in wait.
As Willie’s friend and hapless fellow investor,
Bobo, James Bullock provides a masterful profi le of
desolation. It crushes him to break the bad news to
his friend; as cameos go, it’s a real gem.
As events draw to their climax, each of the four
major characters has a moment of his or her own
that is utterly heartbreaking and enormously satisfying.
They are forces of nature, each an element colliding
with and crashing in on each other, ultimately
fi nding peace and grace in equilibrium.
Patrick Robinson’s Willie is full of delightful
turns, both surprising and inevitable, fi ery and tender.
It’s a joy to see his work again. Song Marshall’s
Beneatha is both above and a part of the earth, its
air element, if you will: plucky and willful yet fi ercely
loyal to her family and ultimately to her own heart.
Melody Jackson’s Mama Lena is the healing water,
the family’s moral center of gravity, astoundingly
strong and achingly sweet. And Roberta Burke’s
Ruth is the earth, the anchor that keeps all the others
rooted in love. She is the family’s great wounded
heart, and her performance will break yours, if you
have one.
It’s almost a shame the Limelight doesn’t have
a traditional proscenium stage with a drawn curtain
across the lip. I got the distinct impression patrons
would love to have had the chance to applaud the
design—which was superlative. Designer Scott Ashley
continues to raise the bar, setting new standards
for rich detail that invite audience members into the
world of the play. The opportunities it provides for
simultaneous action, appropriately highlighted or
muted, help enrich the play’s visual layering considerably.
With that fi rst note sounded, it’s hard not to
be thoroughly enveloped and involved in the story in
a very personal way.
As much as this play has been produced, it
would be so very easy for a misstep or several in
any one of a dozen directions: a Honeymooners/All
in the Family-style set, unearned sentiment, furniture-
chewing performances, and characterizations
that lapse into archetype or even stereotype. Yet
this production shows an uncommon sense of balance—
within each character, between them as an
ensemble, and taken all together as all the human
and inanimate elements of this complete world. It
honors the playwright’s original vision and its place
within its own contemporary context, all the while
providing us with fresh, timeless truths. Small truths,
to be sure, but the kind that affi rm in us a dignity to
which we all aspire.
A Raisin in the Sun runs from February 8 – March
9, 2008 on the Limelight Theatre’s Main Stage. Call
(904) 825-1164 for individual show times, reservations,
and information. Location: 11 Old Mission
Avenue, St. Augustine.
Article Published in the 2-14-08 Issue of EU Jacksonville
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