A Raisin in the Sun at the Manchester Royal Exchange, review

I’ll never know exactly what it felt like to be black, poor and struggling in 1950s Chicago - unless reincarnation exists, and works retroactively. But Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun - which made history in 1959 as the first play by a black woman to be staged on Broadway - comes as close as is humanly possible, one imagines, to taking you to the heart of that particular, pressure-cooker experience.

For two and a half hours or so, you share with the Younger family - old matriarch Lena, her son Walter Lee, daughter Beneatha, daughter-in-law Ruth, and young grandson Travis - a multitude of hopes, fears, and frustrated yearnings. And come the end, you even share its anxiety, defiance and courage as the family stands poised to move into an all-white affluent neighbourhood that has already spurned it.

At least you do when the acting is spot-on, as it is in Michael Buffong’s exemplary production at the Royal Exchange. Hansberry’s talent for fluent, fresh, often funny dialogue is not in doubt. Yet her hit debut is such a model of compression - dealing with a range of familial frictions, economic hardship, identity politics and race relations - that in lesser hands, it could devolve into a lumbering issues-drama.

What’s terrific about Buffong’s revival is that, with clarity and urgency, it delivers the essential narrative through-line - as various members of the clan skirmish over the potential life-changing uses of a $10,000 insurance cheque bequeathed Lena by her dead-from-overwork husband. At the same time, it does unhurried justice to all the subtle, complex shifts of mood and incidental character-details of the piece.

Thrice-steeped in this play already, American actress Starletta DuPois brings a remarkable lived-in quality to the anchoring role of Lena; she’s dreamy, mournful, stubborn, stoical and in the set-to scenes with son Walter, no longer her pride but still her joy, utterly heartbreaking. For his part, Ray Fearon as the impatient, moody alpha-male of the house, sick of the neo-slavery of his chauffeuring job and intent on ploughing the money into a dubious liquor business, exudes more than enough sexual charisma, quiet strength and saving humour to hold the character’s unattractive traits in richly rewarding tension. Assured support comes from, among others, Jenny Jules as his exasperated-devoted wife, from Tracy Ifeachor as his sister - old before her time yet flushed with adolescent indecision - and from Damola Adelaja as the latter’s smooth Nigerian suitor. A brilliant play, brilliantly served.

• Tickets: 0161 833 9833. To 20 Feb