A RAISIN in the SUN – A HIT
Brian Sands – Ambush
“…it’s like watching the Juilliard String Quartet play a work by Beethoven or Mozart”
Just returned home from the Voices in the Dark/Ashe production of “A Raisin in the Sun.” If you care about theatre in general and New Orleans theatre in particular, get your tickets for it now. For, if you miss it, you will regret it for the rest of your life.
As Lena Younger, Carol Sutton is, in a word, extraordinary. It is a role she was born to play, and she plays it like Jascha Heifetz played the violin or Vladimir Horowitz the piano. Yes, she is THAT good. Still, that should come as little surprise knowing Ms. Sutton’s talents.
Astonishing, though, is the performance of Michael C. Forest as Lena’s son in his STAGE DEBUT. One can only imagine, watching him convey all of Walter Lee’s passions, that this is what it must have been like on March 11, 1959, in the Ethel Barrymore Theatre when Sidney Poitier created the role. Matching them in every way are Constance Thompson as Walter Lee’s put upon wife Ruth and Ebony Duely Johnson as his strong-willed sister Beneatha. To return to a musical metaphor, when these four actors are together onstage, it’s like watching the Juilliard String Quartet play a work by Beethoven or Mozart.
Equally fine are Martin Bats Bradford, Jim Holmes, Tracy Mann, Christopher Robinson and young Ellington Benoit.
Sixty years after its premiere, Lorraine Hansberry’s words remain profound and moving.
SUN
SUTTON SOARS in “A RAISIN in the
By ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Critic (“Steppin’ Out“)
By the time Lorraine Hansberry died in 1965 at the tender age of 34 from pancreatic
cancer, she had already made history. Her award-winning play, A Raisin in the Sun, about an African-American family attempting to move out of a redlined slum and into a well-to-do white neighborhood was the first play written by an African American woman to open on Broadway.
In celebrating its 60th anniversary this year, Voices in the Dark Repertory Theatre Company is presenting the first local production in some time. Helmed by director Tommye Myrick, the cast of nine performers is outstanding, led by the irrepressible Carol Sutton. Sutton gives a brave performance as matriarch Lena Younger, the head of the clan who comes to see homeownership as not only a way out of an overcrowded apartment, but as a sign they have achieved a small part of the American dream. Surprisingly, Sutton has never played the role before, which is a shame because it is a part she was seemingly destined to play, a performance of a lifetime with a strong, supportive ensemble of fellow actors. Lena (Carol Sutton) talks with her daughter-in-law Ruth (Constance Thompson) and son Walter Lee (Michael Forest). Her most heartrending moments on stage are spent with Michael C. Forest, who plays her son Walter Lee Younger. Walter Lee is a
self-loathing chauffeur who wants to become a liquor store owner and provide for his young wife and son, but
he pins his hopes for the family’s future on the $10,000 beneficiary death benefit insurance check due to arrive at the play’s start. A photo of the late actor, mentor and director John O’Neal prominently graces the
set and serves as the effigy of the recently deceased father figure. In Sutton, Myrick has cast an ideal choice of a strong leading lady who knows how to lean into her character and give the emotional support needed for the other cast members to turn in marvelous performances. Myrick’s experience as a director gives this, the first of three major productions slated for the Ashé, a rich sense of continuity and a feeling that Hansberry’s characters have truly come alive from the printed page to the stage.
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