Ever since his Tony-winning performance in the hit revival of August Wilson’s “Fences” two years ago, Denzel Washington has been on the hunt for another Broadway play.
He and Kenny Leon, who directed that revival, pored through all sorts of scripts, old and new. There was talk Washington would play Hickey in Eugene O’Neill’s “The Iceman Cometh,” following in the footsteps of such greats as Jason Robards, James Earl Jones and Kevin Spacey.
A number of Wilson plays came up, including, “King Hedley II,” “Two Trains Running” and, my personal favorite, “Seven Guitars,” an underrated masterpiece.
But it looks as if he’ll go with the most groundbreaking play by a black writer in the American theater — Lorraine Hansberry’s “A Raisin in the Sun,” which was first produced on Broadway in 1959.
Washington will play Walter Lee Younger, a limousine driver whose hopes and dreams of making it big in America are stifled by the Chicago ghetto.
Leon will direct, with Scott Rudin (“Fen-ces,” “The Book of Mormon”) producing.
A quick aside: I can’t believe Washington didn’t want to come back in a revival of “Checkmates,” his first Broadway play. I saw it, and boy, was it a doozy!
Washington and his co-star, Marsha Jackson, played a hip, swinging young couple in Detroit who square off against an older, conservative couple (Ruby Dee and Paul Winfield). At one point, Washington was called upon to camp it up as a homosexual in a style you could only get away with back in 1988.
“While it’s easy to name a recent Broadway play or two as awful as ‘Checkmates,’ ” Frank Rich wrote in the Times, “it may be necessary to get out the scrapbooks to recall one quite so amateurish and boring.”
That’s a fair assessment, I’d say.
The most notable thing about “Checkmates” was the fact that one of its producers was in San Quentin at the time it opened — Michael Harris had been convicted of attempted murder and was involved in drug trafficking.
Makes those guys behind “Rebecca” look like pikers!
In any event, “Checkmates” certainly didn’t hold back Washington, who went on to become one of the biggest movie stars in the world.
And he was sensational in “Fences,” facing off against an equally impressive Viola Davis in several riveting scenes.
It’s too early to report who’ll star opposite Washington in “A Raisin in the Sun.” But I ran into Whoopi Goldberg at a Christmas party, and when I mentioned the revival to her, she said she’d do anything to play the part of Lena, Walter’s wise, tough-minded mother.
“I know that lady,” she said. “I love that lady.”
(For the record, Denzel, I think Whoopi would be terrific.)
Leon directed a fine production of “A Raisin in the Sun” in 2004, starring Sean Combs, who acquitted himself very respectably, I thought. His co-stars — Audra McDonald, Sanaa Lathan and Phylicia Rashad — were so good they were all nominated for Tony Awards.
(Rashad won for Best Actress, and McDonald, for Featured Actress.)
“A Raisin in the Sun” is a wonderful play — wise, warm and often very funny. “Checkmates” notwithstanding, Washington usually appears in pretty intense shows — “Fences,” “Richard III,” “Julius Caesar.”
So it will be nice to see him getting some laughs in “Raisin” as a man who doesn’t really grow up until he learns a few things from the smart women around him.
Nothing’s firmed up about production just yet. But I’m told to look for it in the spring of 2014 — just in time for some more Tony Awards.