THEATRE REVIEW:
KPBS
AIRDATE: September 24, 2004
Two potent plays from earlier times resonate strongly
with our own. "A Raisin in the Sun" was a groundbreaker in 1959, when
it dramatized the racism and housing discrimination leveled at a working-class
African American family in Chicago. Lee Blessing's "Two Rooms," which
was commissioned by the La Jolla Playhouse in 1988, was inspired by the Beirut
hostage crisis, when terrorists held American citizens captive. Both stories
could be ripped from today's headlines. And both plays are getting gripping
productions on local stages.
When she wrote "A Raisin in the Sun," at age 29, Lorraine Hansberry became the youngest
American playwright, the fifth woman and the only African American to win the
New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Play. Tragically, she died of
cancer only six years later, in 1965… at age 34. But she was way ahead of her
time, confronting issues like Civil Rights and abortion, as well as personal
pride and family legacy.
The local production wisely teams the new Ion Theatre with
Common Ground Theatre and the Council for Fair Housing of San Diego. The result
is dazzling. This realistic, kitchen-sink drama features complex,
multi-faceted, flesh-and-blood characters, marvelously inhabited by a stellar
cast, under the assured direction of Claudio Raygoza. Sylvia M'Lafi Thompson is
the proud, manipulative, compassionate matriarch in a family teeming with
dreams, each one imagining a different use for the $10,000 of insurance money
coming their way after the father's death. Monique Gaffney is an electric
presence as the budding young activist and feminist who wants to finance her
medical education so she can change the world. As her brother, Shaun T. Evans
is superb as he reaches for the American Dream, loses his footing and
ultimately becomes a man. P. Shekinah Perkins is rock-solid as his
long-suffering wife. The play is a great American classic, and it should be
seen by anyone who cares about history, theater, diversity or equality.
History repeats itself in Lee Blessing's "Two
Rooms" as well. Though it's set in the 1980s, hostage-taking, prisoner
abuse and even beheadings are, unfortunately, all-too-current events. The faces
or nationalities of the terrorists may change, but their motives and methods
have not. This intense drama, staged by Stone Soup Theatre, shows us not only
what goes through the captive's mind, but what his waiting wife endures, as
she's pulled in opposite directions by a reporter who wants her to speak out
and a government functionary who urges her to keep silent. It's a perfectly
spare, compelling production, with forceful direction by Therese Schneck and
outstanding performances by Paul Morgavo, Rebecca Johannsen, Landon Vaughn and
Julie Sachs.
These two pungent plays make the political personal. And
that's the very best way for theater to inform and inspire.
©2004
Patté Productions Inc.