Oscar Isaac and Rachel Brosnahan star in a rarely performed play by Lorraine Hansberry.
Catalina Kulczar/Brooklyn Academy of Music
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Catalina Kulczar/Brooklyn Academy of Music
Oscar Isaac and Rachel Brosnahan star in a rarely performed play by Lorraine Hansberry.
Catalina Kulczar/Brooklyn Academy of Music
After playwright Lorraine Hansberry rose to fame in 1959 with A raisin in the sunshe continues, five years later, with The sign in the window by Sidney Brustein. The show had a short run on Broadway and was rarely revived.
Now the first major New York production in nearly 60 years is getting first-class treatment at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) – it stars Oscar Isaac, of star wars fame, and Rachel Brosnahan, better known as the wonderful Mrs. Maisel.
In 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. This play, which realistically depicted a black family on the south side of Chicago, took Broadway by storm, became a popular movie in 1961 and was later one of the secondary school curricula. But when The sign in the window by Sidney Brustein — a critique of white liberalism set in Greenwich Village — debuted in 1964, critics weren’t as wowed.
“There was real resistance and intolerance,” Gresham said. “A resentment…she’s gone out of her lane. And there’s always that tone of, ‘Who does she think she is?’ “
Yet Hansberry was writing from personal experience. She lived among the artists, intellectuals and social activists of Greenwich Village. “She wanted to write a play that was true to her experience,” Gresham says, “and where she lived and her choices. And she wanted to talk about the people she knew.”
Unfortunately, Hansberry was dying of cancer. While doing rewrites from a hotel room across from the Broadway theater, she was too ill to attend rehearsals and previews, and the play was unfinished. Just months after it opened, the 34-year-old playwright died and the play ended.
“It’s wild and it’s messy and flawed, 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, at times, the inconsistent way in which motivations – or seemingly lack of motivation – occur with the characters…seems so true to life.”
Hansberry’s own life was certainly complicated. While married to Robert Nemiroff, a white man and close associate, she had several long-term relationships with women. Nemiroff and Hansberry eventually divorced, but never stopped working together professionally.
Director Anne Kauffman explains that the many topics covered in The sign in the window by Sidney Brustein feel relevant in 2023 – perhaps even more so now than when it was written.
“We really don’t know where the race is, the politics, the culture, the social issues, what it’s like to be human these days,” Kauffman said. “And who should we be listening to right now other than Lorraine Hansberry, who was prescient? And I feel like we’re still catching up with her.”
Lorraine Hansberry in New York on April 7, 1959.
NY Herald Tribune/AP
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NY Herald Tribune/AP
Lorraine Hansberry in New York on April 7, 1959.
NY Herald Tribune/AP
For Kauffman, the play is a call to activism. His characters are caught between cynicism and hope in a chaotic world, both large and small. Rachel Brosnahan, who plays Iris, said she saw it too. Iris is an up-and-coming actress, engaged in a struggle to find her own identity and independence from her willful husband.
“One of the things I really appreciate about Lorraine is her acceptance 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 aren’t the only thing in motion; so is the script. After the Broadway production, four different versions of the script were released, all edited by Robert Nemiroff.
Nemiroff’s daughter, Joi Gresham, the estate’s literary executor, worked closely with director Anne Kauffman to create the actor’s version of the Brooklyn production. They not only reviewed the various published versions of the script, but also Hansberry’s notes and drafts at the Schomburg Center for Research and Culture in Harlem.
“We kind of landed in this incredible creative method,” Gresham said, “talking to each other, 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 the window by Sidney Brustein? Only time will tell.
Brosnahan mentioned there’s a past within the play that she reveals specifically touching, because it displays Hansberry’s all-too-short future. “The line is, ‘I’m 29 and I want to start knowing that when I die, more than 10 or 100 people will know the difference.’” she mentioned. “It’s beautiful. And I can’t stop thinking about Lorraine.”
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