IN 1959, “A Raisin In The Sun,” a play about (among many other things) a black family in Illinois that wants to move into a house in a white neighborhood, hit the New York stage and electrified the theater world.
Not quite 50 years later, a black family from Illinois wants to move into the White House – an unimaginable prospect when the show’s then-29-year-old African American playwright, Lorraine Hansberry, wrote it.
The world of possibilities isn’t lost here. A show that could have appeared hopelessly out of date proves that some ideas don’t die so fast.
The latest production of “A Raisin In The Sun” stars Sean Combs (a.k.a. every form of Diddy you can think of).
Right off, lemme say, that in the drought of the writers’ strike, this play and this production is like the sky opening and letting in some cool, sweet rain on a parched field.
It’s that good.
The made-for-TV production is not, as I had assumed, a film of the Broadway show that Combs had starred in back in 2004.
It is its own production with a cast that gives glorious new life to the vintage play.
The play, of course, tells the story of a family on Chicago’s South Side in the 1950s. The Younger family – Lena the mom (Phylicia Rashad), and her grown children, Walter Lee Jr. (Sean Combs), Beneatha (Sanaa Lathan), Walter’s wife Ruth (Audra McDonald) and their son, Travis (Justin Martin) – all live together in a tiny, two-room apartment.
Dad has died and the family awaits the $10,000 life insurance check that promises to change their lives forever.
For Beneatha, it means she can go to medical school.
For Walter, it means he can buy into a liquor store and stop being a “Yas, massah” chauffeur for a rich, white man.
For Lena, however, who is still dealing with the loss of her husband, it means something entirely different – putting a down payment on a new home, where there will be room to breathe, for starters.
Well, they can breathe if Mr. Lindner (John Stamos), the rep from the white community in which they plan to move, stops breathing down their necks, that is.
The tension that builds among Walter, his wife, his mother and sister is nearly unbearable – despite the fact most of us either read the play in high school or have seen the classic movie with Sidney Poitier, Claudia McNeil, Diana Sands, Ruby Dee and Louis Gossett Jr.
Combs does a great, great job – especially for someone who isn’t known as an actor.
And the rest of this cast glows.
Don’t miss it – and don’t let your kids miss it either.
“A Raisin In The Sun”
Tonight at 8 on ABC