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Friday, July 20, 2012
Arts Theater review: A Raisin in the Sun
Posted By Perry Tannenbaum on Fri, Jul 20, 2012 at 9:46 AM
Based in New Jersey, Evening Star Productions is bringing us the celebrated 1959 dramatic prequel to the 2011 Pulitzer Prize-winning Clybourne Park, Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun. It’s great to have another black company contributing to the Charlotte scene, but this timely production at Duke Energy Theatre is a questionable gift. Doors that wouldn’t open and shut for the Younger family were a sadly accurate barometer of the craftsmanship that permeates this show.
Evening Star producer Tony Mullins directs and stars as Walter Lee Younger, the struggling Chicago chauffeur with big dreams. Mullins is a powerful actor with undeniable potential, shown most memorably in his declaration that he will grovel, if necessary, to Karl Lindner, the emissary from all-white Clybourne Park sent to buy back the Youngers’ home to preserve the community’s racial purity. But Mullins could have used a director himself when he learned that his plans to open a liquor store had gone awry. The Saturday night audience actually laughed at Walter Lee’s breakdown. After all the problems with the doors, Mullins’ collapse, and outrageous triple casting that drew additional laughs, they rose for an enthusiastic standing O anyway.
Mullins’ deficiencies as a director become quickly evident. Overall tempo is slack and imprecise. At different points, Walter Lee and his son Travis both stop abruptly at the front door before receiving the news that’s supposed to make them stop, and when Karl is thrown out of the apartment, Walter Lee’s mother is already standing there, way before she’s scheduled to return home. And while we get that this a low-budget production, Mama’s $10,000 check should arrive in a sealed envelope every night. Splurge!
Playing Mama, Myrna Chase brings assorted problems to the production. She’s perhaps a little too kindly as Lena, but what she really doesn’t get about Mama is her rhetorical force, the refrains in her great monologues that should gather a mighty momentum. If that weren’t enough, Chase gets the blame as Evening Star’s costume coordinator for Younger daughter Beneatha’s bizarre outfit. This is an outspoken Bohemian experimenter, you may remember, an earnest student who aspires to be a doctor while dating a plutocrat — and she first appears to us appareled in overalls?
As Beneatha, Donna Steele moves mechanically onstage as she’s wooed by an admiring African, and she totally misses the rebellious teen’s intellectual snobbery. But then again, her director and costumer seem to have missed it as well. The production is lifted by the fine work of Tiffany Bryant-Jackson as Ruth, Walter Lee’s skeptical, long-suffering wife, who manages to help Mullins make up for the intensity gap created by the other women.
The other men in the cast have less to do, but if you don’t mind the triple casting, they’re all fine enough. I especially liked the authenticity Kineh N’Gaojia brought to Joseph Asagai, the wooing African, and Nathan Morris, although he’s probably a couple of decades too young to represent the stuffed shirts of Clybourne Park, has the right amounts of presumption, awkwardness, and distress.
All I want to say about Mikey Farrell’s set is I hope he finishes it — and that it lasts through the second week of the run. Looked touch-and-go to me. The wonder of it all is how well A Raisin in the Sun withstands all the abuses and indignities heaped upon it. If you already know the show, its haunting essence will come to the rescue when Evening Star’s Raisin goes sour.
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