Two years ago, Bruce Norris’s Clybourne Park won the Pulitzer Prize for its reconsideration of the landmark drama, A Raisin in the Sun, and his heretical suggestion that perhaps race relations have not progressed as far as we think they have.
Now comes Palm Beach Dramaworks to exhume the earlier breakthrough play by Lorraine Hansberry, with its more authentic bitterness and built-in sense of hope. Artistic director William Hayes brings in Seret Scott to handle the company’s first-ever guest directing chores and the result is a compelling, involving production, even if the script itself shows signs of aging.
From a 21st-century perspective, Raisin seems less about the struggle to break the color line in a Chicago suburb and more about the conflicting hopes and dreams of the Youngers, fictional stand-ins for Hansberry’s own family.
Those hopes are largely tied to an imminent $10,000 insurance check. Walter Lee needs it to buy into a liquor store and out of his demeaning job as a chauffeur and his sister Beneatha wants it to pay her medical school tuition, but Lena ― the family’s matriarch ― intends to use it for a down payment on a house in Clybourne Park, getting her family out of the South Side ghetto.
Those dreams will be put in jeopardy along the way, of course, but ultimately Mama knows best, even if that means standing up to the racist Clybourne “improvement association” and the friendly bigot who is all too eager to buy the Youngers’ new house from them before they even move into it.
Ethan Henry heads the impressive ensemble as Walter Lee, whose fits of fury are white-hot. Pat Bowie is more even-tempered as Lena, but she never lets us forget the character’s iron will and fount of dignity. Walter Lee’s lack of maturity has to be countered by his wife Ruth, and Shirine Babb radiates both exasperation and strength.
A Raisin in the Sun now looks like what it is, an early work from a talented writer who would die before she would develop fully as a dramatist. Still, it is a play that represents a moment in time, and yet has much about it which is timeless.
A RAISIN IN THE SUN, Palm Beach Dramaworks, 201 Clematis St., West Palm Beach. Through Sunday, March 3. Tickets: $55. Call: (561) 514-4042.
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Those theatergoers convinced that the musical theater should limit itself to conventional tales of boy-meets-girl romance that lead to “happily ever after” conclusions have probably never been to Slow Burn Theatre Company, or were chased away quickly. This constantly surprising young troupe is drawn, instead, to offbeat musicals, which usually means those that were short-lived on Broadway.
Typical of co-artistic directors Patrick Fitzwater and Matthew Korinko’s taste is Side Show, a curious history of the lives and desires of Daisy and Violet Hilton, set in the Depressionera, when freaks of nature made their sordid living by putting themselves on display in circuses. The show lasted roughly three months in New York back in 1997, which was either before its time or maybe this unusual, but unusually compelling, piece is simply not geared to the mainstream, expense-account crowd that constitutes the Broadway audience.
The show opens with a hard-edged, Brechtian number, inviting us to Come Look at the Freaks, as a bearded lady, snake charmer, cannibal and other assorted oddities parade before our eyes. Among them are Daisy (Kaela Antolino) and Violet (Courtney Poston), joined at the hip and virtually identical in looks, but these sisters have very different personalities, dispositions and dreams, which becomes the dilemma which drives a wedge between them.
In the four years of Slow Burn’s existence, Fitzwater has found and showcased a lot of new talent, and he has a couple of exciting new discoveries in Antolino and Poston, both products of Palm Beach Atlantic University.
Both have powerful soprano voices, as Henry Krieger’s driving, ballad-heavy score requires. Bill Russell’s lyrics are not quite on a par with the music, settling too often for an obvious or prosaic rhyme, but he supplies some irony-rich song ideas for the Hilton twins ― like When I’m By Your Side or I Will Never Leave You ― even if the numbers rarely develop much beyond the title statement.
Supporting the female leads, and getting plenty of dramatic opportunities of their own, are Korinko and Rick Pena as the men in their lives, who take the Hilton twins from the circus into vaudeville. Along the way, they become romantically involved with the girls, although Terry (Korinko) has difficulty committing to a relationship with Daisy, as he sings in Private Conversation.
Slow Burn spends a fraction of what, say, the Maltz Jupiter does on its productions, but it gets consistently attractive, effective works from its team of designers. Ian T. Almeida’s sets capture the tawdry atmosphere of the circus tent and, later, the lavish kitsch of a vaudeville production number in a fantasy Egypt. Pena again doubles as costume designer, notably a conjoined wardrobe for Daisy and Violet.
It is fair to say that you have not seen a musical quite like Side Show and that is exactly as Slow Burn intends it.
SIDE SHOW, Slow Burn Theatre Company, West Boca Community High School, 11281 W. Glades Road, Boca Raton. Through Sunday. Tickets: $35. Call: (866) 811-4111.