BWW Reviews: An Explosive A RAISIN IN THE SUN Plays At Open Stage

Poet Langston Hughes asked, "What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun? Or does it explode?" Playwright Lorraine Hansberry asked the same question several years later in her A RAISIN IN THE SUN, a play partly based on her own family's struggle to buy a home in a white neighborhood in Chicago. The play exploded on stage, magnificently, and was most recently brought back to Broadway last year with Will Smith as Walter Lee Younger. Now it's on stage at Open Stage of Harrisburg, with enough sparks to set off a small explosion of its own.

Director Donald Alsedek is blessed with a core cast that's become almost a repertory group, working together seamlessly to present a whole cloth that is an intricate tapestry of family dynamics, financial motivations, racism disguised as well-meaning concern, and human pride. What begins as a widowed African-American mother, Lena Younger (in a sparkling performance by Sharia Benn), waiting for the life insurance proceeds after her husband's death turns into a spiral of greed, white power, and disappointment, all waiting for an explosion to happen, and in Hansberry's hands, explode it does - although the Youngers are somewhat better than all the king's men at picking up the pieces afterwards.

Leonard Dozier gives his usual excellent performance as Walter Lee Younger, a chauffeur with a dream of owning his own business. He's looking for a cut of his mother's insurance money to invest in a liquor store, to which Lena objects strenuously. He's a mass of shifting emotions, always just on the edge of total instability. His sister, Beneatha, is in college and planning on medical school, and also wants the money. His wife, Ruth, is expecting their second child. And he's a proud man, perhaps proud enough to be asking for hubris. Meanwhile, Lena thinks that the family's problems will be solved by moving to a better - a white - neighborhood.

Nhadya Solomon gives a spirited performance as Beneatha, who's exploring her identity through music and her failed guitar classes, dance, at least an attempted atheism, and study. She's dating the wealthy George Murchison (Jeremy Patterson), who doesn't think she needs to do more than be beautiful and obedient, when she meets fellow student Joseph Asagai (J.C. Payne), who's from Nigeria and plans to go back after graduation. He introduces her to her heritage, which stirs her conscience for civil rights, and an entirely new attitude towards George. Patterson and Payne are entirely believable in their roles as a presumptuous rich boy and an African freedom activist, though it's never quite believable that Beneatha is as temporarily enamored of George as she is; perhaps that's a five-decades-later look back at college relationships.

Dan Burke plays Karl Lindner, the spokesman for the Clybourne Park Improvement Association who is trying to keep the neighborhood white. Burke makes wonderful hay of a small and unlikeable part; you can almost see the sweat breaking out on his face as he faces an African-American family, probably the largest group of non-whites he's ever been in alone. Burke makes Lindner's smarm palpable; he's every creepy and offensive snake-oil salesman you've ever met, trying to sell his non-existent charm to people he dislikes.

Jessica Gondwe, who plays Ruth, Walter's wife, has a run of professional credits from Sight and Sound Theatre in Lancaster, though she may not be known to a Harrisburg audience. Her delivery of Ruth seems a bit halting at the start, though she warms to the part by the end of the first act and is riveting by the time of discovering and trying to make choices about her newly discovered pregnancy.

While the bulk of the show is the question of what Walter will do, the real story is among the women, who are the backbone of the Younger family. Their interplay is fascinating - the tension between Lena and her daughter Beneatha, the friendship between Beneatha and Ruth, and Lena's concern for Ruth during Walter's crisis.

RAISIN is an exploration of the effect of racism, in more than one way, on African-Americans. Walter's lackeying for a white businessman, the women's serving in white homes, the idea that the way out is through a liquor store, fears of black families in white neighborhoods, the Back to Africa movement, are all effects of racism in American society. Walter's apparent impotence in all ways except in his bedroom is a particularly powerful statement on the matter, as is the family's dispute about appropriate hair styling for African-Americans, preferring it straightened to meet white hair trends rather than "natural". There's also a touching on the sexism of the period - some disbelief that Beneatha would consider medical school, George's behavior rules for her, Asagai's blithe assumption that she will follow him to Africa, and Walter's clear assumptions of Ruth's place in his life. Lena is the glue that holds the women together, supporting Beneatha's plans for medical school, putting Walter in his place about Ruth's pregnancy.

It's almost frightening, watching the play, to realize how little has actually changed in many ways. Like Lindner's feigned concern for everyone being comfortable around their neighbors, much racism and sexism are no longer overt, but the attitudes and effects are still there.

But underneath all of this, there's a huge strain of universalism. Everyone deals with dysfunctional families. Everyone knows someone who's done everything possible to realize a dream and had it shatter at their feet. African-Americans are not the only ones who have had to pick up pieces around them and rebuild their lives. To view the story as only about African-Americans, and not to see this message as well and to identify with it, is to miss a great deal of the play's meaning.

This production is one of the more intermittently amusing versions that this writer has seen; the Arden's recent production in Philadelphia was comparatively funereal. The latter is a bit of a shame, since Hansberry didn't really stint on moments of comic relief in the show. In the hands of a less capable director or cast, the levity might seem inappropriate, but here it's nothing but the real life of a family, where no matter how bad some things seem, others are simply funny.

Aside from the main cast, Madison Bond does a fine job as Travis, Walter and Ruth's school-age and school-avoidant son. Aaron Bomar has a small but nicely nuanced performance as BoBo, one of the other liquor store investors who's been scammed (watch his hands as he wrings his hat; there's an entire performance merely in Bomar's gestures). Jason Moffitt, the assistant stage manager, has a walk-on moment as the furniture mover.

Open Stage has now performed both RAISIN and CLYBOURNE PARK (admittedly out of sequence); perhaps we'll be fortunate enough for them to complete the RAISIN cycle with Kwame Kwei-Armah's BENEATHA'S PLACE eventually. Like CLYBOURNE, this production of RAISIN has everything going for it. Once again, Alsedek and his cast should be proud of their accomplishment. Perhaps one of these days they won't be one of the rare theatres in the region to put on worthy productions of African-American theatre.

At Open Stage through February 22. Call 717-232-6736 or visit openstagehbg.com for tickets and information.

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