'A Raisin in the Sun' review — this seminal portrait of an African-American family’s struggles is still searingly resonant

Read our review of Lorraine Hansberry's 1959 play A Raisin in the Sun, now in performances at the Lyric Hammersmith to 2 November.

It might be 65 years since Lorraine Hansberry's seminal play A Raisin in the Sun first agitated Broadway – simultaneously making her the first Black American woman and youngest playwright to have a work staged there – but Tinuke Craig’s revival proves that this portrait of an African-American family’s struggles to better their circumstances in the late 1950s has lost none of its resonance.

Through deft observations and blistering, bullseye-hitting lines, it captures race, class and gender discrimination, identity crises, and much more, all from inside the insular pressure cooker of one family’s kitchen.

The Youngers are restless in the cramped confines of their two-bed apartment on Chicago’s South Side, which matriarch Lena originally moved into with her late husband, but now shares with her two grown-up children, daughter-in-law and grandson – who sleeps on a pull-out bed in the living room-cum-kitchen. This is a hard-working household but they’re just scraping by, and all of their dreams are resting on the promise of a life-changing insurance payout worth $10,000.

Their challenges are viscerally channelled through a superb cast. Doreene Blackstock is exemplary as the dignified Lena, the defiant, unbreakable backbone of this family, whose ambition is moving into a white neighbourhood – where the residents callously make it clear, via a messenger, that the Youngers are not wanted.

Solomon Israel is also excellent as her son, the volatile, bitter Walter Lee, who spends the first act becoming increasingly unlikeable, and most of the second swaggering around the stage, drink in hand. His misogyny and internalised racism – directed largely at his peacekeeping wife Ruth (a likeable Cash Holland) — is a tough listen, but integral to this story.

Through daughter Beneatha (a lovably spoilt, headstrong Joséphine-Fransilja Brookman) and her suitors Joseph (a persuasive Kenneth Omole) and George (a demeaning Gilbert Kyem Jnr), assimilation and contrasting Black American experiences are explored. The Nigerian Joseph, all joie de vivre, encourages Beneatha to embrace African customs foreign to her as a fifth-generation American. College boy George is on his own aspirational journey and wants Beneatha as arm candy, not a woman with views. She tries on the identities projected onto her, but would rather become a doctor than settle down with either of them.

The disadvantages the Youngers face as a Black family are compressed into a single character, the passive-aggressive Karl (an appropriately greasy Jonah Russell), who penetrates their home, bribing them to stay away from his all-white neighbourhood.

In between the big plot points of Craig’s well-paced production are snapshots of everyday life for relations who tease, hurt and love one another, while battling against the prejudices stacked against them.

Cécile Trémolières’ set of yellowing walls marked with blood-like splatters corroborates their urgent desire to move, as do the between-scene bangs and swooshing noises of Max Pappenheim’s sound design: this rented apartment is not a place of quietude. Trémolières’ translucent walls, meanwhile, allow private moments of despair for this stoic family to be seen.

It’s a searing revival of a work that still seems sadly relevant – and a reminder that, for many, levelling up is a long way off.

A Raisin in the Sun is at the Lyric Hammersmith to 2 November. Book A Raisin in the Sun tickets on London Theatre.

Photo credit: A Raisin in the Sun (Photos by Ikin Yum)