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TV REVIEW : ‘Raisin’ Retains Its Power on ‘Playhouse’

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Times Theater Writer

If you loved the Roundabout Theatre’s 25th anniversary production of Lorraine Hansberry’s “A Raisin in the Sun,” you’ll love the television clone that is showing up tonight on “American Playhouse” (8-11 p.m., Channels 28 and 15).

Like its stage predecessor (which came to the Wilshire Theatre in April, 1987), it is a powerful reminder of the loss we all suffered when Hansberry died of cancer in 1965 at the age of 34.

“Raisin,” Hansberry’s first and major work for the stage, was in the truest sense a seminal black play. It remains one of the strongest, having exploded on Broadway in 1959 with the force of a hurricane--well before the civil rights movement of the ‘60s was a fact and before there was an identifiable movement known as black theater.

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It has since been filmed and musicalized (“Raisin”), but never with the same force that drives the play, which is still as human, compelling and exceptional today as it was 30 years ago.

The “American Playhouse” production, directed by Bill Duke, acknowledges the debt it owes to Harold Scott’s staging of the Roundabout anniversary production. With one exception--the masterful casting of Danny Glover as Walter Lee--it also employs the same actors in all key roles.

The result is that this television version is every bit as accomplished and perhaps more vivid than its theatrical counterpart, thanks to the camera’s probing eye and its ability to give us this family’s turbulence at close range. The stage version billed itself (not incorrectly, as it turned out) as “definitive.” This “American Playhouse” version is entitled to the same adjective for the same reason: It earns it.

“Raisin in the Sun” is, for any who have not yet encountered it, the emancipation of the Younger family, living in a Chicago walk-up too small to adequately contain them, let alone their dreams.

Walter Lee (Glover), a chauffeur, doesn’t dream; he virtually salivates at the idea of becoming his own boss by owning his own liquor store. His pliant wife, Ruth (Starletta DuPois), would settle for having enough room so their son Travis didn’t have to sleep on the couch. Walter Lee’s sister, Beneatha (Kim Yancey), is the rebel of the piece, with a questioning mind and spirited ambitions to become a doctor.

The mother of this motley crew is Lena (Esther Rolle), a devotedly moral woman, soon to collect the proceeds of a small insurance policy that threatens to tear the family asunder.

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Wisely, Lena does what she thinks is best with the money. This is not necessarily Walter Lee’s idea of what is best. The disagreement turns the household on its ear, bringing up issues of dignity and black pride, self-affirmation and, in the profoundest sense, civil rights.

Hansberry weaves matters of personal and political conscience into a textured, vibrant piece. The characters all grow and change in fascinating and even breathtaking ways, especially the super-bright Beneatha, who rejects her wealthy “assimilationist” suitor George (a disdainful Joseph C. Phillips) to embrace a visiting Nigerian with a sunny disposition (Lou Ferguson) who, among other things, arouses her interest in her African roots--a bold new concept in 1959.

But it is Glover’s insistent performance as Walter Lee, the intensity of his conflicts with his wife and mother (played by Rolle with the serenity and wisdom of a struggling Solomon) that is central to the production. He is consumed by his dream, devoured by it, a raging bull in the china shop of his emotions, who nearly destroys everything he should hold most dear before being bullied back to his senses. He does the right thing in the end (just barely), in a gesture that manages not to feel too pat.

As the family moves into the next phase of its life, there is relief, but the small craft warnings are up. Who said the turbulent ‘60s began with Rosa Parks’ refusal to go to the back of the bus? Unbeknown perhaps even to Hansberry, they began with Lena Younger’s purchase of a small house in a white suburb of Chicago--and her family’s formal intention to occupy it.

In the theater, “Raisin in the Sun” was gripping, but a long sit at 3 1/2 hours. The only criticism of Scott’s direction was that it could have been swifter.

Director Duke’s version for “American Playhouse” revs up the tempo and contains the play without sacrificing a single significant moment of it.

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