Y’all know we had to clown “review” ABC’s A Raisin in the Sun today, right? We’ll keep it brief and try not to rub our prediction of Diddy’s epic failure as Walter Lee too far in (though, come on, fam. You know we gon’ have to say somethin.)
Here, in no particular order, are the five best and worst things about last night’s broadcast of A Raisin in the Sun.
The Best:
1. Phylicia Rashad as Lena Younger. Rashad’s little comedic touches hinted at how in command of the character she was, but the gut-wrenching scene in the end, where she details her late husband’s demise and how Walter Lee’s folly has rendered it all for nought, she joins Claudia McNeil as a Lena of Legend.
2. David Oyelowo as Joseph Asagai. Oyelowo took this role and rang it for all its worth, making each line resonate, each look smolder, and each smile melt our irritation. When he scolds Beneatha, we grin (because she’d been annoying us with her obnoxiousness for nearly three hours) and when he invites her back to his homeland to drink from the calabash by the river and what not, we genuinely hope she gets to go.
3. The way Audra McDonald nails that scene where she’s asking Diddy if he wants hot milk or coffee to stave off his “mean drunk”-itis. It’s heartbreaking and convincing in a way that betrays how very not drunk Diddy is actually acting and it deserves so much more nuance and tenderness than his follow-up line reading delivers.
4. The director/writer decision to cut Diddy’s screen time. This film took a bunch of liberties, some egregious and some effective, but the best creative license instinct the filmmakers could’ve followed was leaving Diddy out of much of the first (and portions of the second act). It gave audiences time to connect with the new interpretation of a familiar classic, and time to savor and appreciate how well the women of the Younger house were able to interact without the burden of carrying him through each scene.
5. The gift-giving scene, where the older Youngers present Lena with gardening tools and Travis gives her a gaudy straw sunhat. It’s charming and cute and no one seems out of place–it’s one of the few times their chemistry is believable as a family unit.
The Worst:
1. The extraneous scenes. What was up with Lena sending her bosses’ daughter off to school? Or her trip to two different markets to shop for apples? Or Diddy’s sitting forlorning on a fence by some water? Or that bar scene where George tries to cop a feel off Beneatha? It may be argued that film allows for an expanse of scenery that the stage does not, but quite frankly, one of the best things about Hansberry’s play is the claustrophobic feel of the Younger apartment. Its cramped confines and the manic way you’re rarely allowed to leave that set raises the stakes of the family’s struggle and keeps you focused on their internal turmoil, rather than their external stressors.
2. The aforementioned creative liberties. Aside from the ton of scene changes, Qualles adapted Hansberry’s dialogue in ways that were more than a bit puzzling at turns. Why, for instance, did Travis need to bring fifty cent to school for “poor Black people?” That didn’t make much sense. The heavy-handedness of Carl Lindner’s word choice (he used “you people” no less than five times in a three-minute scene) was exasperating.
3. Sean Patrick Thomas as George Murchison. Thomas was serviceable, we suppose, but he had zero chemistry with Sanaa, none of the elegance of Lou Gossett Jr. (who played the role in the ’61 film), and so little charisma that the choice between he and Asagai seemed too obvious for the screen time it was given (and that triangle was given a LOT of screen time).
4. The set/costuming. We know that the film was shot in Canada in 2007, but couldn’t they have at least tried to make it look like South Chicago of 1959? The apartment had space, ample sunlight, and a clean exterior. The cast donned tweeds, tailored dresses, emerald-green felt hats, and shiny, pristine-looking shoes in just about every scene. It’s not that it isn’t believable that their closets would be filled with quality clothes or their apartment wouldn’t be wide and filled with sunlight. It’s that, if that’s going to be the case, it’s difficult for us to invest in their dire need to leave their neighborhood. What’s so bad about it, besides having to share a bathroom with the neighbors? They have three hours to convince us of the necessity of the Youngers’ escape and instead, we got a scene of Walter, Ruth, George, and Beneatha dressed to the nines, wining and dining it up at the local juke joint.
5. Finally: Diddy. Problematic, gravely miscast, frozen-faced Diddy. Jokes aside, the problem with casting Sean Combs in this role is that bad acting conflates the many layers of Walter Lee Younger’s character. Without any of the nuance necessary to evoke allegiance, sympathy, disgust, hope—anything!—there’s no way to understand where this character’s coming from. It’s already a little exasperating that Walter Lee’s so pouty and pissed when his mother spends her money on a new house for his family. But at least with a capable actor in the role, you’re able to understand (and maybe even empathize) with Walter’s feeling of being cowed by white men and black women and his frantic, fault-laden yearning to fulfill just one of his poorly plotted dreams. Combs was incapable of making you understand his motivations—you couldn’t see love or hate in his eyes when he delivered Hansberry’s scathing, passionate lines to Ruth and you couldn’t gauge his shame in having to return to the house to beg his wife for fifty cent to go to work, after giving
his son the last of his money to prove that the family wasn’t poor. Hanging any kind of subtlety on the shoulders of Sean Diddy Combs—a man who rose to popularity by looking like this:
his son the last of his money to prove that the family wasn’t poor. Hanging any kind of subtlety on the shoulders of Sean Diddy Combs—a man who rose to popularity by looking like this:
is just asking way too much.
