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53 °F Forecast | Road Cams Friday, January 28, 2005 Today's News | Classifieds | Autos | Homes | Jobs | Tempo | Health | Community | Home Delivery SECTIONS Home Page Local News Sports Business Obituaries Life Opinion - Politics Tempo AP News Weather Classified Archives Site Map SPECIAL SECTIONS Since We Asked Outdoor Journal Menu Guide How To Guide Wellness Connection Readers' Choice Real Estate Showcase Real Estate Guide Joy Magazine Homelife Magazine Wedding Guide Passport to the Rogue Valley EXTRA Newspaper in Education Personals Movie Times TV Times E The People Volunteer Opportunities Moving to Southern Oregon? MARKETPLACE Find a Car Find a Home Find a Job Classifieds Place an ad eSouthernOregon Automotive Communities Entertainment Publications Recreation Calendar CUSTOMER SERVICE Frequent Questions Advertising Information Home Delivery Employment Contact Us Media Kit Network Affiliate Oregon Road Conditions & Cams Email Story to a Friend April 27, 2004 Theater review OSF’s ‘Raisin’ takes few risks despite good acting Time has dulled some of the 1959 landmark black play’s edginess There is nothing like the prospect of a life insurance check to concentrate family conflicts. It is the South Side of Chicago, 1954, and the Youngers, like members of a Chekhov family, have their wills set one against the other. The Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s revival of Lorraine Hansberry’s "A Raisin in the Sun," directed by Andrea Frye, opened Saturday night in the Angus Bowmer Theatre. It is a pleasant, straightforward production of a play that makes few demands on an audience. The contemporary audience, in fact, may enjoy the humor and the sentiment and forget what a landmark the play was. Famously young, gifted and black, Hansberry set out to write a family drama about African-American characters, which was considered avant-garde and risky. But when the play opened in March 1959, it was a triumph. It was named Best American Play of the year, ran two years on Broadway and is playing there now in revival. The play changed American theater forever. Seeing realistic black characters created by a black playwright was a new experience for white audiences. And the play almost single-handedly created a black theater audience overnight. Yet at bottom it communicates a sense of the universality of human experience. Lena Younger (Pat Bowie) wants to use the insurance money from the death of her husband, Big Walter, to buy a house in an all-white Chicago neighborhood and escape the family’s cramped apartment and ghetto life. Her son, Walter Lee (Chris Butler), wants to go into business with friends and buy a liquor store. Lena’s daughter, Beneatha (Aisha Kabia), wants to go to medical school. A further complication is that Walter’s wife, Ruth (Crystal Fox), is pregnant, and things are so crowded now that the couple’s son, Travis (Travis Bond), sleeps on the sofa. Advertisement That the characters don’t have the same options as other folks — white folks — is both the sand in Walter Lee’s oyster and the stuff of social drama. Hansberry’s family had in real life integrated a white neighborhood, but unlike the humble Youngers, they were an affluent family who entertained the likes of Langston Hughes and Duke Ellington. We sympathize with Walter Lee’s drive to transcend circumstances of his life, although we have our doubts about his business acumen. When Lena makes a tough decision about the money, Walter Lee spirals downward until he’s forced to make a defining choice. The acting is strong throughout, although Butler paints Walter Lee with a rather monochromatic palette until his climactic speech to Karl Lindner (Richard Howard), a smarmy racist representing a "neighborhood improvement association" ("Well — we are very plain people..."). That speech is a great stage moment, and it’s as strong as ever here. Kabia is a fresh Beneatha, a young intellectual looking for herself in a world with new ideas brewing. There is surely a bit of Hansberry in the part. As successful a play as it is, "Raisin" suffers from a curious flaw. Big Walter cannot even be cold in the ground yet — it doesn’t take that long to get a life insurance check — and yet except for a few fond memories dropped in passing, there is no sense of loss here. This strong man lived in this apartment for 30-something years, and yet he seems to have just vanished. Why aren’t these people grieving? Direction is tight enough considering the script’s many tangents, but at about three hours the production nonetheless drags. Just compare it with the 1961 movie with Sidney Poitier, Claudia McNeil and Ruby Dee (for which Hansberry also wrote the screenplay), which is just over two hours. Far from weakening the play, the cuts brought the central conflict into sharper focus (although it then softened it by deleting some of the racial references in a timid nod to 1961 comfort levels). Hansberry wrote at the beginning of a great movement that would change American society forever. It is impossible to see this play and not reflect on the profound changes of the past half- century. But time has a way of shifting our experience. Suzan-Lori Parks’ "Topdog/Underdog," another drama about African-American family life, is playing at the OSF’s New Theatre through June 25. Reading the two plays side-by-side, one is persuaded of the superiority of "Raisin." But on stage, this "Raisin" does not have the edgy energy of "Topdog." In the 1950s and early ’60s, audiences were jolted by "Raisin." Today they find it as comfortable as old slippers. This is due to the play’s ethos, and also its undeniable sentimentality. It is, in fact, hard to imagine a safer play to produce today. Reach reporter Bill Varble at 776-4478 or e-mail [email protected] Mail Tribune Home Local News | Sports | Business | Obituaries | Life Opinion - Politics | AP News | Archives | Site Map E Southern Oregon | Classified Copyright © 1997-2005 Mail Tribune. All rights reserved. Privacy Policy | Terms & Conditions Website Feedback ADVERTISERS A D V E R T I S E R S SPECIAL SECTIONS Auto Finder Job Finder Home Finder Joy Magazine Homelife Magazine Tempo Readers' Choice Real Estate Showcase Since We Asked Outdoor Journal Moving to Southern Oregon? 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