Those of us who’ve sat through Sophocles set in a Dublin housing project or Shakespeare relocated to Fascist Italy or Blairite Britain are familiar with the standard defense: the specifics of time and place, clothes and furniture aren’t important; what’s enduring is the author’s immortal insights into human nature. The revival of A Raisin in the Sun (at the Royale) upends the argument. Here is a play from the day before yesterday—1959—in which the exterior appearances—the costumes and props —are instantly recognizable, and yet the underlying human impulses might as well come from another planet.

Lorraine Hansberry took her title from “Harlem,” Langston Hughes’s famous poem of 1931:


What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun
Or fester like a sore—
...
 

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