ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, February 15, 1997 TAG: 9702190005
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 12 EDITION: METRO
TYPE: THEATER REVIEW
SOURCE: KATHERINE REED STAFF WRITER
Mill Mountain Theatre's production of "A Raisin in the Sun" does not fail in any respect to do justice to this classic American play about dreams and, especially, dreams deferred.
Although it is set in the '50s - a time when anything seemed possible for white America but when so much was still impossible for so many black Americans - the issues it deals with have by no means become irrelevant. They have evolved and become more complex, but because this play deals so intensely with what it means to be family, the play seems destined to always have enormous power.
And this cast does a pretty good job - sometimes a great job - of harnessing all the energy playwright Lorraine Hansberry's beautiful words supply.
This is the story of the Younger family, which has at its head a powerful woman name Lena (Betty Vaughn). Lena; her son, Walter; his wife, Ruth; their son, Travis; and Lena's daughter, Beneatha, all share a tiny tenement apartment on Chicago's South Side. Travis (S.J. Ambrose) has to sleep on the couch, and Lena and Beneatha share a bedroom. It is a cramped but well-kept space with a backdrop of tenements just beyond like a too-close horizon. John Sailer's wonderful set emphasizes the inevitability of the characters' lives and their lack of privacy: Even the walls are translucent, providing a ghostly glimpse of what goes on just outside the family's center.
The event that the Youngers are anticipating at the beginning of the play is the arrival of a $10,000 check - an insurance settlement in the death of Lena's husband, whose portrait hangs prominently on the living room wall. Walter (E. Phillip McGlaston) spies his big chance to get "things" for his family through a business deal with a disreputable acquaintance. Ruth (Nicole Bridgewater) sees a way out of the tenement and the possibility of a thing as simple as giving her little boy his own bedroom.
Beneatha (M. Drue Williams), a medical student, has a lot to say about everything - except the subject of what ought to be done with the money. She seems to assume a continuity in her scholarly life, even though Lena isn't saying what she will do with the windfall.
The answer is decided when Lena finds out that Ruth is expecting another baby. A religious woman, Lena disapproves of Walter's plan to open a liquor store. It's too late in life, she says, to have that on her "ledger" with God.
So Lena goes and buys a house in what ends up being a mostly white Chicago neighborhood. Walter is already embittered by wanting what he can't have, so Lena's lack of faith in his investment plan throws him into an even deeper state of despair.
This play requires pretty tight ensemble work, and this cast delivers it. Perhaps because this is a long play (almost three hours), there is a justified concern for keeping things moving. So a few lines got stepped on at Friday night's opening. All in all, guest director Clinton Turner Davis does a nice job of bringing dramatic moments to fruition. He has a very solid cast to work with, especially McGlaston as Walter. His breakdown speech in the third act is hard to watch but delivered with great subtlety.
"A Raisin in the Sun" is a rare thing in the first place - a play richly endowed with intensely human, intensely believable characters. There are no mouthpieces here, no representational beings, and Mill Mountain Theatre's production is a rare opportunity to see a classic, finely done.
LENGTH: Medium: 65 linesby CNB