or does it explode

"raisin" prompt script
Originally uploaded by suttonhoo.

The opinion of a woman who has slept only three hours after being up for 24 before boarding a very long flight back to Chicago from San Francisco, probably can’t be trusted to comment on a show that she drove straight to from O’Hare (well, stopped for dinner first) so as to honor plans and tickets shared with a friend long before the SF trip came up.

But if you want to know what I think about The Court’s production of Raisin anyway?

One hundred percent worth the bargain ticket price of $36 to sit three rows back to see the musical adaptation of Raisin in the Sun in the heart of the very same neighborhood (on the University of Chicago campus) that tried to prevent Lorraine Hansberry’s family from moving into the house they had purchased there in the 50s (which led to lawsuits and victories and an extraordinary play from a undiscovered playwright).

Well worth it to sit there and be washed over by a fine, jazzy score -- that at first aggravates the tired mind with that soft-edge dissonant sound that can accompany jazz but is unexpected in musical theater – until the heart gives in and just lets it be, lets it in, and gives way.

And baby: the whole thing is worth it just to watch Ernestine Jackson occupy that stage, silently, gorgeously, profoundly, all alone with the exception of a potted plant, craddled like a baby, in the closing moments of the show. (Me? Weep? I’m sure it’s just because I needed some sleep.)

What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
Like a rasin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore --
and then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over --
Like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags
Like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

~ Langson Hughes