RELEVANCE REMAINS : ‘RAISIN IN THE SUN’ REVIVAL

Seminal is a word too often abused, but seminal applies quintessentially to Lorraine Hansberry’s “A Raisin in the Sun.”

The 1959 Broadway production of this black family drama unleashed two decades of brave, black theater with plenty to say and a new talent to be heard. A movie was later made and a musical, but neither had the impact of the play.

The current revival of “Raisin” that arrived Wednesday at the Wilshire Theatre serves to reaffirm the significance of this piece--not only for its prescient self-assertion, but for its heralding of a new playwright with a fundamental understanding of human nature and sound dramaturgy. (American dramatic literature sustained an incalculable loss when Hansberry died of cancer a few years later at the age of only 34.)

This Roundabout Theatre production is billed as “definitive,” a dangerous word, no doubt prompted by the fact that it has reinstated scenes cut even from the original Broadway version. At a marathon length of 3 1/2 hours--a long sit, by any definition--the urge to snip is understandable. Certainly the show, which has been touring, could stand tightening up, but the writing is not padded. The advice from this corner is: Be prepared. The stamina is all.

And worth it. With Esther Rolle at the head of an excellent cast--and provided your sitting apparatus holds up--the effect is one of pleasurably reacquainting us with a moving and important play.

It offers a page in the life of the Younger family harboring big dreams in an apartment too dingy and small to contain them. Individual dreams differ, but the desire to break loose and live rewarded and free is the same.

Walter Lee (Delroy Lindo), a chauffeur, wants to find independence by owning his own liquor store. His militant sister Beneatha (Kim Yancey), in search of herself, wants to become a doctor. Walter Lee’s pliant wife, Ruth (Starletta DuPois), will settle just for a place where her son Travis (Kimble Joyner) won’t have to sleep on the couch. And Lena (Rolle), mother to this untidy bunch, wants a home with her own patch of garden. When Lena comes into the proceeds of a small insurance, the dreams become divisive.

But this is not plain kitchen sink drama. Behind the deceptively diurnal events lurk important (and in 1959, remarkably new) issues of black pride, morality, self-affirmation and civil rights.

Nor is it any accident that Beneatha is repelled by her wealthy suitor George, a smug “assimilationist” (played with punctilious self-involvement by Joseph C. Phillips), and drawn to a sunny visiting Nigerian (Lou Ferguson) who stirs up--among other tumult--Beneatha’s interest in her African roots.

Remarkably, the misadventures of the Younger family are as vivid today as they were 28 years ago, largely thanks to Hansberry’s seamless weaving of several matters of personal and political conscience into an effortlessly entertaining play. Its comic moments are bright and alive, its angers organic and its griefs overwhelming.

Under Harold Scott’s knowing (if not always swift enough) direction, Rolle is dignity itself as the matriarch, parceling out wisdom and the proceeds of her tiny windfall in a Solomon-like desire to see every member of her family doing well in the world. Lindo, DuPois, Joyner, Phillips, Ferguson and especially Yancey offer terrific support. (Yancey’s African dance, staged by Loretta Abbott, at the top of Act II is a giddy high point.) And as the mealy-mouthed Karl Lindner, the white man who offers to buy off far more than just a piece of real estate from the Youngers, John Fiedler is the only member of this cast to repeat a role he created in the Broadway version.

Production values are solid. You can feel the dankness of Thomas Cariello’s seedy apartment set, even if Shirley Prendergast’s dingy lighting inexplicably brightens whenever someone steps into the kitchen area. Costumes by Judy Dearing (in Rolle’s case, by Dorothy Marshall) are on target.

Performances at 8440 Wilshire Blvd. run Tuesdays through Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 7:30 p.m.; matinees Saturdays and Sundays, 2 p.m. Ends April 26. Tickets: $17-$32.50 (213-410-1062).