Theatre in Review: A Raisin in the Sun (Ethel Barrymore Theatre)

	Sophie Okendo and Denzel Washington: Photo: Brigitte Lacombe

History repeats itself on Broadway in ever-sooner iterations these days. Not only are we getting A Raisin in the Sun again only ten years after its last production, it comes with the same director, Kenny Leon. Even in today's revival-happy climate, this would seem to be a case of pushing one's luck. When I first heard about this production, my first thought was: Really, are there so few good American plays that a select number must be brought back every decade or so?

But excellence is its own defense, and the new production at the Barrymore is by far the best of the three Raisins I have seen, not least for the way in which it fuses its company of actors into a thoroughly convincing family ensemble. The success of any Raisin production hinges on conveying the sense that the members of the Younger clan have inhabited the same cramped South Side Chicago apartment forever, causing them to crack under the stress of decades of living at close quarters -- getting on each other's nerves, sharing a bathroom with other tenants, and fighting a losing battle with cockroaches. The appearance of a $10,000 windfall -- the payout from the late patriarch's insurance policy -- should be a godsend. Instead, it functions like a time bomb, laying bare their buried resentments as each of them angles to realize a long-deferred dream.

Leon's direction is especially acute in highlighting the little details that reveal the big, troubling emotions that keep the Younger family at bay. You see it when Walter Lee Younger asks his wife, Ruth, for anything but scrambled eggs for breakfast, and she immediately, furiously begins whipping up a bowlful of them, pointedly ignoring his request. It's there when matriarch Lena Younger announces, "I ain't meddling," before commencing to do precisely that, or when she quietly, but thoroughly, dresses down her daughter, Beneatha, for her casually dismissive attitude toward Christianity. It's evident when little Travis Younger suddenly, fiercely throws his arms around his father's waist and when Walter Lee angrily slaps his hands together as he realizes he has let the money slip through his fingers. It is perhaps most obvious when the buzzer sounds and Walter Lee, instead of answering, stands paralyzed, staring at the door, knowing that on the other side a mailman holds the check that will alter the family's life forever. "Sometimes it's so hard to let the future begin," he says.

Both of Leon's Raisin revivals have been marked by questionable casting of the role of Walter Lee. In 2004, P. Diddy, lacking the training and experience the role demands, struggled visibly. At times it seemed as if his gifted co-stars -- Sanaa Lathan, Audra McDonald, and Phylicia Rashad -- were willing a performance out of him. It was a testimony to the brilliance of Lorraine Hansberry's writing that the play survived. Denzel Washington, the star of the current production, has the chops, but, at 58, is 23 years older than Walter Lee. Even aging him to 40, as has been done here, doesn't entirely do away with the issue. Fortunately, Washington reads far younger than he is, and the age issue never really distracts, but for one detail. Perhaps as act of compensation, Leon has directed the actor to play Walter Lee -- already an impetuous, almost adolescent character -- with an edge of immaturity that makes him offputtingly abrasive in the early scenes. It isn't until the third act, when Walter Lee must confront the fact that he has foolishly squandered most of the money in a failed business deal, does Washington come into his own, making the character's anguish powerfully real.

In any case, he is surrounded by a trio of stunning performances. Sophie Okonedo, her face a hard mask of resignation until, faced with the possibility of a new life away from the ghetto, she dissolves with happiness, shedding many years in the process. She partners beautifully with Washington, especially in the scene in which they wonder how they have ended up forever at odds with each other. Anika Noni Rose captures the breezy confidence of Beneatha, Walter Lee's little sister, who plans to be a doctor, but she can also be a hurt little woman-girl when facing her mother's fury, and with a single glance, she can freeze out a suitor who most definitely is not interested in her mind. LaTanya Richardson Jackson, who is only five years older than Washington, nevertheless convinces as the matriarch who holds them all together, even if she has to occasionally knock heads to do so. She is especially riveting when, facing the loss of the money, her rage breaks open for all to see, and, later, when she insists that Beneatha take the full measure of her brother before judging him. And she all but brings down the house when, clutching the frail plant she has nurtured in this most unforgiving of environments, she says, simply, "It expresses me."

All of the smaller roles have been equally well cast. As the white member of the neighborhood association of Clybourne Park, where the Youngers intend to move, David Cromer is a fine, gentle-voiced bigot, quietly pressuring them to be bought out even as he pays lip service to racial harmony. Sean Patrick Thomas is especially striking as Joseph Asagai, the African student who romances Beneatha, as is Jason Dirden as a less successful suitor. ("I don't go out with you to discuss the nature of quiet desperation," he says, forever forfeiting his chances with her.) In both productions, Leon has cast the tiny, but crucial, role of Bobo, the play's principal messenger of bad news, with a distinguished character actor. In 2004, it was Bill Duke; here it is Stephen McKinley Henderson, who also played Bobo in the 1986 Roundabout revival; once again, he proves that there are no small parts.

Mark Thompson's set design is slightly more handsome than Thomas Lynch's 2004 take on the Younger apartment; you can see how carefully the family has marshalled its meager resources over time. Brian MacDevitt lit the 2004 production with seeming effortlessness, and he delivers once again. Ann Roth's costumes are filled with period details and also fit each character likes clothes from a closet. Scott Lehrer's sound design provides fine reinforcement for the selection of jazz tunes curated by Branford Marsalis.

More than 50 years on, A Raisin in the Sun is now clearly more than a remarkable first play; it is one of the 20th century's classics, a picture of a black American family caught between its past and future in a way that continues to resonate powerfully today. Hansberry's clear-eyed depiction of the forces oppressing the Youngers, and their own possibly self-destructive traits, is the very stuff of wrenching drama. So what if we just saw it a few years ago? We certainly haven't seen it done as brilliantly as this. -- David Barbour