A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry

Most significantly, because of the specificity of its time and place-the leftist artistic West Village milieu of the early 1960s, or “this very present,” as Hansberry calls it in the text-it has a greater than usual potential to seem dated or insular. In this production the first act lasts for ninety minutes that, though never less than engaging, try one’s stamina. Its theme and subject matter are, at least superficially, more diffuse than those of A Raisin in the Sun.

Though it now has the benefit of Hansberry’s increasingly and deservedly vaunted reputation-as well as two film and television stars, Oscar Isaac and Rachel Brosnahan, to help keep the lights on this time-the play is still difficult for audiences. Hansberry died of cancer two days after its closing night.Ī fascinating and hugely entertaining revival of Sidney Brustein had a limited run this winter at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, where I saw it, and recently opened on Broadway with the same cast. Lorraine Hansberry’s The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window lives in the shadow of its author’s famous first play, A Raisin in the Sun, which along with Death of a Salesman and The Iceman Cometh stands as a signal representation of disquiet in the age of “the American dream.” It was the second and final play that Hansberry lived to see produced on Broadway, running for 101 performances from October 1964 to January 1965, and lasting that long only due to an epic campaign by its supporters despite slow ticket sales and mixed reviews.

Its flaws often provide insights that a more polished and lauded work cannot. Because it requires more generosity to appreciate, it gives the viewer or reader the chance to feel a kinship with it, to make it their own. But in its messiness or “wrongness” it can also be more inviting. First, it has the element of surprise: we are less likely to know how we are supposed to interpret it. The neglected work has a number of advantages over the acknowledged masterpiece.

A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry