Slow Pacing Blunts ‘Raisin’s’ Impact

The Long Beach Playhouse production of Lorraine Hansberry’s “A Raisin in the Sun” features some fine acting, but the tension and momentum are stymied by slow pacing.

While Martin Luther King Jr. spoke about a dream of racial harmony, Langston Hughes asked a more personalized question: “What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?” Using a poor black Southside Chicago family living in a cramped, sunless, cockroach-infested apartment during the 1950s, Hansberry explores Hughes’ query.

Hope comes in the form of an eagerly awaited life insurance check. The widowed Mama (Zina Letrece) wants to buy a house and put some money aside for her daughter Beneatha’s (Elisa R. Perry) medical education. Her son Walter (Frantz Turner), embittered by the daily grind of servitude as a chauffeur, argues to buy into a liquor store business that Mama opposes on moral grounds.

Turner and Pamela Shaddock as his wife, Ruth, inhabit their roles with the weariness of a disillusioned couple whose youthful visions are dulled. Perry contrasts their subtle pessimism with her brashly abrasive air of ambitious hope. As the family’s foundation, Letrece imbues Mama with a humble dignity.

Yet director Roger Smart lingers too long on each individual performance and utterance, allowing this three-hour production to drag. In the plot’s most pivotal scene, the performance of George P. Norment as Walter’s friend Bobo is disappointingly two-dimensional. This weak link, coupled with the slow pacing, hinders the full impact of Hansberry’s drama, which unfortunately is just as pertinent today as when it debuted on Broadway in 1959.

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* “A Raisin in the Sun,” Long Beach Playhouse, Studio Theatre, 5021 E. Anaheim St., Long Beach. Fridays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; this Saturday, 2 p.m.; Ends July 11. $10-15. (562) 494-1616. Running time: 3 hours.