After more than 60 years, 'A Raisin in the Sun' still stings
It runs through Sept. 28 at Matthews Playhouse, 100 E. McDowell St., Matthews
This review by longtime Charlotte arts critic Lawrence Toppman was published by The Charlotte Ledger on September 20, 2025. You can find out more about The Charlotte Ledger’s commitment to smart local news and information and sign up for our newsletter for free here. Ledger subscribers can add the Toppman on the Arts newsletter on their “My Account” page.
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Review: Brand New Sheriff-Matthews Playhouse collaboration illuminates Lorraine Hansberry’s classic
Lorraine Hansberry’s “A Raisin in the Sun” follows three generations of the Younger family in Chicago as they clash over dreams of a better life, from buying a home to starting a business or pursuing education. (Photo courtesy of Roy Sheriff/Brand New Sheriff Productions)
by Lawrence Toppman
Before I tell you about “A Raisin in the Sun,” let me say a few words about Rory Sheriff.
For just over a decade, he has kept the city’s only regularly performing Black theater company alive, in a climate where smaller producers fight ceaselessly for attention, audiences, spaces and money. I have attended but not reviewed shows by Brand New Sheriff Productions — most recently, a worthy “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone” in February — because its former landlord, Central Piedmont Community College, scheduled those for only one weekend at a time. (The Ledger doesn’t cover shows that end before a review can run.)
This month, BNS has partnered with Matthews Playhouse on a two-weekend run of “Raisin.” The results justify a drive to the suburbs to see the kind of theatrical collaboration too rare in this city.
You may know the Langston Hughes poem “Harlem,” which gives Lorraine Hansberry’s partly autobiographical drama its title. Hughes asks what happens to a dream deferred, and his answers become embodied in Hansberry’s characters.
Does it “sag like a heavy load”? That would be Ruth Younger (Renee Welsh-Noel), the South Side Chicago mother who cleans kitchens and has learned she’s pregnant again. Does it “fester like a sore — and then run”? That’s Walter Lee (Jonavan Adams), her husband, whose feelings of inferiority in a white-bossed world make him consider a dangerous investment. Or does it “dry up, like a raisin in the sun”? Mother Lena (Lillie Oden) has started to go through that process. Yet her husband’s recent death, which brought a $10,000 life insurance check, offers everyone a way out.
Walter Lee wants to trust a shady pal to open a liquor store. Beneatha (K. Alana Jones), his younger sister, hopes to pay off medical school tuition. But Ruth and 10-year-old son Travis (Solomon Doleman) exult in Lena’s decision to buy a home in a better neighborhood, even if they’ll be the first Black family to live there in 1959 — at a time when a Black family nearby has been bombed out of its house.
Hansberry’s play belongs to the small American canon of dramas that never grow old, not only because of the timelessness of the emotions but because of the sad timeliness of its themes. Thinking about an amiable racist who offers to pay the Youngers not to move to Clybourne Park, Walter Lee says the man wanted everyone “to sit down together and hate each other in Christian fellowship.” That line echoes painfully when you look around America right now.
The production’s main roles have mostly been double-cast, though Oden plays Lena in both casts. Director Corlis Hayes, who often works with BNS, knows the actors’ skills (at least the ones I saw on opening night) and has brought them out.
Oden lacks the size and imposing presence of some Lenas, so she conveys strength through a combination of patience, stubbornness and deep faith. Welsh-Noel’s Ruth is less weary and more volatile than the traditional version. That pairs her well with Adams, whose Walter Lee is more restless and frustrated than angry; he’s ground down by daily life, exhausted by its unfairness rather than inflamed by it.
Even smaller roles have changed. Dionte Darko’s Asagai, the idealistic Nigerian graduate student who loves Beneatha, seems more down-to-earth and less doctrinaire. Bobo has usually been presented as a whining dupe caught between trusting Walter Lee and crooked Willy Harris in the liquor store deal; Bobby Tyson’s assertive version, punished for his naivete just like Walter Lee, is more interesting than that.
As I understand the credits, Matthews Playhouse provided most of the designers and BNS most of the actors. Bob Croghan’s set perfectly captures the look of a run-down apartment whose dignified inhabitants have done all they can to abide in genteel poverty, and Emily McCurdy’s costumes — including Asagai’s conventional American dress, not the usual Nigerian robes — tell us exactly who these characters are or hope someday to be.
If you’re going
“A Raisin in the Sun” opens the 30th mainstage season at Matthews Playhouse, 100 E. McDowell St. in Matthews. It runs through Sept. 28 at 7:30 p.m. Friday, 2 and 7:30 p.m. Saturday and 2 p.m. Sunday.
Lawrence Toppman covered the arts for 40 years at The Charlotte Observer before retiring in 2020. Now, he’s back in the critic’s chair for The Charlotte Ledger — look for his reviews several times each month.
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