“A Raisin in the Sun,” which plays Monday night on ABC, is a cleanser for selves soiled by a thousand “Millionaire Matchmakers.” It is a noble enterprise never dulled by its good intentions. Starring core members of the cast of the 2004 Broadway revival of Lorraine Hansberry’s 1959 play, the television adaptation offers polish and feeling, grievance and gut. It moves and it sings, even if the gifted Broadway musical star Audra McDonald, who appears as Ruth Younger, doesn’t ever actually get to hit a note.
Ms. Hansberry’s play, the subject of many revivals over the years, never belonged to the literary category James Baldwin once derided as “protest fiction.” It is a race play that exists as a quiet treatise on the economies of loss, asking us to think less about the broad offenses of prejudice and more about the value of familial identity and obligation.
The best plays of the 1950s turned the concept of family into a tragic affair. Individuality and rebellion were expressions of courage. “A Raisin in the Sun” instead made a novel case for a certain kind of conformity that transcends its racial theme. Our bloodlines make us stronger, it says; they don’t tear us apart.
“A Raisin in the Sun” revolves around the anticipation of a $10,000 check. The Younger family, struggling and cramped into a tiny apartment on the South Side of Chicago, is expecting an insurance annuity from the death of its patriarch. Its divergent dreams hinge on the cash. Walter Lee (Sean Combs) wants to use it to join the entrepreneurial classes and open a liquor store. His mother, Lena (Phylicia Rashad), seeks to put her life as a domestic behind her and provide the means to send her daughter, Beneatha (Sanaa Lathan), a sophisticate in training, to medical school.
There are no mediocre performances here. Ms. Lathan is terrific at conveying the snobbery that comes from cultural self-loathing. Beneatha doesn’t simply want better things; she wants to be part of a world of bigger and better ideas. Walter, a chauffeur to a wealthy white businessman, wants to live well and be seen. That Mr. Combs makes his desires seem like more than empty materialism must come in some part from the fact that he has been hungry at the same table.
The play’s most poignant speech is his, and he delivers it with all of the dignified vengeance it demands, showing us that one of the great advantages of money is the power it provides to tell the wrong people off. The Youngers have bought a house in a white working-class neighborhood whose community leader, a race baiter with a briefcase (played by a perfectly smarmy John Stamos) seeks to buy them out and retain the demographics. Walter is commendable and Mr. Combs commanding and fierce.
A RAISIN IN THE SUN
ABC, Monday night at 8, Eastern and Pacific times; 7, Central time.
Directed by Kenny Leon; John M. Eckert, producer; Craig Zadan, Neil Meron, Sean Combs, Carl Rumbaugh, Susan Batson and David Binder, executive producers; teleplay by Paris Qualles; music by Mervyn Warren; edited by Melissa Kent. Based on the play by Lorraine Hansberry.
WITH: Sean Combs (Walter Lee Jr.), Phylicia Rashad (Lena Younger), Audra McDonald (Ruth), Sanaa Lathan (Beneatha), John Stamos (Mr. Lindner), Justin Martin (Travis), Sean Patrick Thomas (George Murchison), David Oyelowo (Joseph Asagai), Bill Nunn (Bobo) and Ron Cephas Jones (Willy Harris).
Continue reading the main story
