Lorraine Hansberry’s 1959 play “A Raisin in the Sun” is a landmark of American theater.
It was the first show on Broadway helmed by a Black director (Lloyd Richards) or written by a Black woman. The piece continued to open doors for African American artists with two more successful runs on Broadway and was most recently produced off-Broadway three years ago. The story of a Black family on Chicago’s South Side also spawned much-admired films in 1961 and 2008.
Less well-remembered is the 1973 musical adaptation, “Raisin,” which premiered eight years after Hansberry’s death.
The production won the Tony Award for best musical, a Grammy Award for best Score and launched a national tour. But it never returned to Broadway or became a popular selection among regional theaters, perhaps bowing to the popularity of Hansberry’s original.
The Black Rep is now producing “Raisin” through Sunday at the Edison Theatre on the campus of Washington University. Members of its creative team said the musical offers a new way into Hansberry’s story.
“Song and dance elevate this story,” said choreographer Kirvin Douthit-Boyd, who is also artistic director for St. Louis Dance Theatre.
“That’s not to say there is anything wrong with the original,” he added, “but when you have all of these different facets of art come together with a lot of integrity and a lot of care for storytelling, then you can't go wrong. There’s something about responding to sound and text with movement that’s really profound.”
A period piece with stubborn relevance
Set in 1951, the story follows the Younger family, whose matriarch is waiting for a $10,000 life insurance check after the death of her husband.
Her son, who works as a chauffeur but resents the power imbalance with his white employer, sees a route to financial self-sufficiency by using the money to buy a liquor store. The matriarch, known as Mama, has her sights set on a nicer house in a more prosperous neighborhood – which, in segregated Chicago, means a predominantly white neighborhood. The family’s prospective neighbors aren’t happy about the possible move, though they cloak their bigotry behind smiling faces.
City officials, bankers and real estate developers in 20th-century St. Louis enforced the sort of housing segregation that figures into “Raisin,” using redlining and racially restrictive housing covenants to limit Black families’ mobility.
The legacy of this systemic racism makes “Raisin” freshly relevant for St. Louis audiences, said Ron Himes, the Black Rep’s producing artistic director and director of “Raisin.” The latest examples come in response to the May 16 tornado, he said.
“Seeing how slow the recovery and the redevelopment talks are about north St. Louis, a lot of that stems from what was going on in 1959, when there was disinvestment in the Black community. The South Side of Chicago is no different than the north side of St Louis in a lot of ways — in terms of redlining, in terms of the number of homes that are not insured or are underinsured,” said Himes.
'You’re going to hear the Black experience'
Robert B. Nemiroff, Hansberry’s ex-husband and literary executor, wrote the musical’s book with Charlotte Haltzberg. Judd Woldin wrote the music and Robert Brittan wrote the lyrics.
The music, as heard on the original cast album, has a definite Broadway sheen on it but is rooted in jazz, blues and music of the Black church. A note in the script makes the creators’ intent clear: “Musically, the quality should be Black – the Blackest interpretation possible.”
“It’s almost like ‘Dreamgirls’ and ‘Bring in ‘da Noise, Bring in ‘da Funk’ had a baby with Earth, Wind & Fire,” said Music Director Jermaine Manor. “You’re going to hear the Black experience. It belongs to rhythm and blues and the soul of who we are as a people.”
Manor leads a 10-person band for “Raisin.” The cast includes 15 actors, dancers and singers. The numbers add up to an expensive show during a time of shrinking budgets. The current production marks just the second time the Black Rep has mounted the show.
“I have some of my staff asking why we’re doing this big show right now,” said Himes. “It's a pretty major undertaking for a theater like ours, at this time, in the conditions that we're living in right now.”
So why take on the challenge?
“Because we have to. It’s one of those plays that deserves to be done,” Himes said, “that should be kept alive in the canon of African American literature for the American stage. It’s what the Black Rep does.”
