[Following the critical success of Hansberrys A Raisin in the Sun,
The Sign in Sidney Brusteins Window – a critique of white liberalism
that takes place in Greenwich Village – debuted in 1964, critics
were not as enamored.]
[[link removed]]

A RARELY REVIVED LORRAINE HANSBERRY PLAY IS HERE — AND IT’S MESSY
BUT POWERFUL  
[[link removed]]


 

Jeff Lunden
February 11, 2023
NPR
[[link removed]]


*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

_ Following the critical success of Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun,
The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window – a critique of white
liberalism that takes place in Greenwich Village – debuted in 1964,
critics were not as enamored. _

Oscar Isaac and Rachel Brosnahan star in a rarely revived Lorraine
Hansberry play., Catalina-Kulczar/Brooklyn Academy of Music

 

After playwright Lorraine Hansberry rocketed to stardom in 1959
with _A Raisin in the Sun_, she followed it up, five years later,
with _The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window_. The show had a short
Broadway run and has rarely been revived.

Now, the first major New York production in almost 60 years is getting
a first-class treatment [[link removed]] at the Brooklyn
Academy of Music (BAM) – it stars Oscar Isaac, of _Star
Wars_ fame, and Rachel Brosnahan, best known as the marvelous Mrs.
Maisel.

Writing _A Raisin in the Sun_ was both a blessing and a curse for
its young Black playwright.

"She was like the 'It' girl coming out of _A Raisin in the Sun,_"
said Joi Gresham, director of the Lorraine Hansberry Literary Trust
[[link removed]]. That play, which realistically depicted a
Black family on the South Side of Chicago, took Broadway by storm,
became a popular film in 1961 and has subsequently become part of high
school curriculums. But when _The Sign in Sidney Brustein's
Window_ – a critique of white liberalism that takes place in
Greenwich Village – debuted in 1964, critics were not as enamored.

"There was a real resistance and intolerance of it," said Gresham. "A
resentment ... she left her lane. And there's always this tone of 'Who
does she think she is?' "

Yet Hansberry was writing from personal experience. She lived among
the artists, intellectuals and social activists in Greenwich Village.
"She wanted to write a play that was true to her experience," says
Gresham, "and where she was living and her choices. And she wanted to
talk about the people she knew."

Unfortunately, Hansberry was dying of cancer. While she did rewrites
from a hotel room across the street from the Broadway theater, she was
too ill to attend rehearsals and previews, and the play was
unfinished. Just a few months after it opened, the 34-year-old
playwright died, and the play closed.

"It's wild and it's messy and imperfect, but incredibly powerful,"
said film and theater star Oscar Isaac, who plays Sidney Brustein, the
intellectual whose life and marriage unravel. "The wildness of it and
the, at times, the incoherent way that the motivations – or
seemingly lack of motivation – occurs with the characters ... feels
so true to life."

Hansberry's own life was certainly complicated. While she was married
to Robert Nemiroff, a white man and a close collaborator, she had
several long-term relationships with women. Nemiroff and Hansberry
ultimately divorced, but never stopped working together
professionally.

Director Anne Kauffman says the many topics addressed in _The Sign in
Sidney Brustein's Window_ feel relevant in 2023 – maybe even more
now than when it was written.

"We really don't know which way is up with race, politics, with
culture, with social issues, with what it is to be human these days,"
Kauffman said. "And who should we listen to at this moment but
Lorraine Hansberry, who was prescient? And I feel like we're still
catching up with her."

Lorraine Hansberry in New York City on April 7, 1959. NY Herald
Tribune/AP

For Kauffman, the play is a call to activism. Its characters are
caught between cynicism and hope in a chaotic world, in both large and
small ways. Rachel Brosnahan, who plays Iris, said she sees that, too.
Iris is a would-be actress, engaged in a struggle to find her own
identity and independence from her strong-willed husband.

"One of the things I really appreciate about Lorraine is her embrace
of small change as powerful change," Brosnahan said. "Because unlike a
lot of other plays, there's not such a clear beginning, middle and end
to their journeys. It's really jagged."

The characters are not the only thing in flux; the script is, too.
After the Broadway production, there were four different published
versions of the script, all edited by Robert Nemiroff.

Nemiroff's daughter, Joi Gresham, the estate's literary executor,
closely collaborated with director Anne Kauffman to create the acting
version for the Brooklyn production. They not only looked at the
different published versions of the script, but also Hansberry's notes
and drafts in Harlem's Schomburg Center for Research and Culture.

"We've kind of landed in this incredible creative method," said
Gresham, "talking to one another, listening to Lorraine, listening to
these different versions and trying to imagine where she would have
gone with it."

So, is this the final version of _The Sign in Sidney Brustein's
Window_? Only time will tell.

_JEFF LUNDEN is a freelance arts reporter and producer whose stories
have been heard on NPR's Morning Edition, All Things
Considered and Weekend Edition, as well as on other public radio
programs._

_Lunden contributed several segments to the Peabody Award-winning
series The NPR 100
[[link removed]], and
was producer of the NPR Music series Discoveries at Walt Disney
Concert Hall
[[link removed]], hosted
by Renee Montagne. He has produced more than a dozen documentaries on
musical theater and Tin Pan Alley for NPR — most recently A Place
for Us: Fifty Years of West Side Stor
[[link removed]]y._

_Other documentaries have profiled George and Ira Gershwin, Stephen
Sondheim, Richard Rodgers, Oscar Hammerstein, Lorenz Hart, Harold
Arlen and Jule Styne. Lunden has won several awards, including the
Gold Medal from the New York Festival International Radio Broadcasting
Awards and a CPB Award._

_Lunden is also a theater composer. He wrote the score for the musical
adaptation of Arthur Kopit's Wings (book and lyrics by Arthur
Perlman), which won the 1994 Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding
Off-Broadway Musical. Other works include Another Midsummer
Night, Once on a Summer's Day and adaptations of The Little
Prince and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn for
Theatreworks/USA._

_Lunden is currently working with Perlman on an adaptation of Swift
as Desire, a novel of magic realism from Like Water for
Chocolate author Laura Esquivel. He lives in Brooklyn, N.Y._

_NPR is an independent, nonprofit media organization that was founded
on a mission to create a more informed public. Every day, NPR connects
with millions of Americans on the air, online, and in person to
explore the news, ideas, and what it means to be human. Through its
network of member stations, NPR makes local stories national, national
stories local, and global stories personal._

_Our network of local member stations collaborates with NPR to deliver
an increasingly rare and vital mix of rigorously reported local and
national stories._

* theater
[[link removed]]
* Lorraine Hansberry
[[link removed]]

*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

 

 

 

INTERPRET THE WORLD AND CHANGE IT

 

 

Submit via web
[[link removed]]

Submit via email
Frequently asked questions
[[link removed]]

Manage subscription
[[link removed]]

Visit xxxxxx.org
[[link removed]]

Twitter [[link removed]]

Facebook [[link removed]]

 




[link removed]

To unsubscribe, click the following link:
[link removed]