A Raisin In The Sun, Lorraine Hansberry’s piercing look at racial discrimination, gender roles, family values, and burgeoning African-American identity in the pre-Civil Rights Era 1950s gets revived to powerful effect at Pasadena’s A Noise Within.

Fifty-nine years may have passed since Raisin scored its then 29-year-old playwright the 1959 New York Drama Critics Circle Award, but the characters Hansberry created nearly six decades ago remain as vibrant and relevant as ever.

There’s recently-widowed Younger family matriarch Lena (Saundra McClain), whose dream of upward social/financial mobility may soon become reality thanks to a $10,000* life insurance check about to be dropped in her mailbox.

There’s Lena’s 35-year-old chauffeur son Walter Lee (Ben Cain), who sees Mama’s windfall as a means towards securing co-ownership of a neighborhood liquor store.

There’s Walter’s housekeeper wife Ruth (Toya Turner), who wants to get the couple’s 10-year-old son Travis (Sam Christian) as far away from their roach-infected Chicago apartment as possible.

 There’s Walter’s 20-year-old college student sister Beneatha (Sarah Hollis), who knows that even a few thousand of her father’s life insurance dollars could make her dreams of medical school a reality.

And there’s Nigerian student Asagai (Amir Abdullah) and black-upper-class scion George (Keith Walker), Beneatha’s smitten suitors, each of whom thinks a wife’s place is in the kitchen.

Though Lena is more than willing to contribute a significant chunk of today’s check to Benny’s education, the last thing she wants as a reward for her late husband’s decades of backbreaking work is a liquor store.

Instead, she dreams of a house in the suburbs, and if that means being the sole black family in a racially segregated Clybourne Park, then so be it.

Times may have changed since A Raisin In The Sun became the first play written by an African-American playwright to make it to Broadway, but not nearly enough to make the Hansberry classic seem even the slightest bit dated, and certainly not at A Noise Within where an inspired Gregg T. Daniel precedes the action with a dramatic voice-over that places its flawed hero front and center and ends the play with a gut-punching Langston Hughes coda.

A superb Cain paints a warts-and-all portrait of a man beaten down by society but not yet broken, someone whose judgment may not always be the soundest but whose heart beats loud and proud.

McClain commands the stage as Mama Lena even in silence and more so still when imparting words of down-home wisdom or fighting for her son’s redemption and her family’s survival.

Turner is simply sensational as a woman torn down by years of menial labor and a husband whose feelings of inadequacy have started to chip away at their marriage.

Hollis is a feisty delight as someone whose dreams of a medical career place her at odds not just with her immediate family but also with dueling beaux Abdullah and Walker, both absolutely terrific.

Bert Emmett makes it clear that Clybourne Park Improvement Association rep Carl Lindner means well even if his claim that “race prejudice doesn’t enter into” his dealings with the Youngers is utter hogwash, Rosney Mauger delivers bad tidings to heartbreaking effect, and Christian charms as the youngest Younger.

Scenic designer Stephanie Kerley Schwartz and props master Erin Walley give us the Younger family apartment in all its rundown glory, the elevated train above it echoed at pivotal moments in composer Jeff Gardner’s powerful, jazz-infused sound design.

Stacy McKenney Norr’s dramatic lighting design, Garry Lennon’s period-perfect costumes, and April Metcalf’s equally fine late-‘50s wigs and make-up complete Raisin’s grade-A production design, with choreographer Joyce Guy giving Berneatha some booty-shaking African dance moves along the way.

Samantha Kofford is assistant director. Gabrielle J. Bruno is stage manager and Canelle Irmas is assistant stage manager. Matthew Kesner is assistant costume designer. Kenneth R. Merckx, Jr. is fight consultant. Lauren Murphy Yeoman is dialect coach. Scenic painting is by Sets to Go and Catherine Lee.

Society may have progressed since A Raisin In The Sun’s Broadway debut, but not nearly enough to make Lorraine Hansberry’s crowning achievement any less relevant in 2018 than it was in 1959. For this reason, and countless more, A Noise Within’s A Raisin In The Sun cries out to be seen.

*80.000 in today’s currency

A Noise Within, 3352 East Foothill Blvd, Pasadena.
www.ANoiseWithin.org

–Steven Stanley
March 3, 2018
Photos: Craig Schwartz

Tags: A Noise Within, Lorraine Hansberry, Los Angeles Theater Review