“I had the opportunity to work with Ruby Dee. It’s so much history in the names of the people who are in this show,” she says. “When I look at the Playbill and I look at the names… Glynn Turman, who is still acting to this day, was Travis. Samuels, who plays Lena (known as Mama), pulls the 1959 Playbill from her bag and we flick through it together. Lena Younger’s husband has died and she is waiting for an insurance cheque that could help change the lives of her son Walter, his wife Ruth and their son Travis, as well as Walter’s sister Beneatha, who wants to go to university.īert LaBonté and Zahra Newman will appear in A Raisin in the Sun with Gayle Samuels for Sydney Theatre Company.
They all dream of improving their lot – and hope could be on the way. The iconic play is set in a segregated neighbourhood in 1950s Chicago, where five members of the Younger family live in a run-down, two-bedroom apartment. With Sebbens unavailable, Wesley Enoch directs a cast of 10 that includes Samuels, Bert LaBonté and Zahra Newman. Originally programmed for 2021, with Shari Sebbens directing, the season had to be postponed because of COVID restrictions. Now, the play is about to have its Australian premiere at Sydney Theatre Company. The Broadway cast subsequently appeared in the 1961 film, directed by Daniel Petrie. It received three other Tony Award nominations for Best Play, Best Direction and Best Actor in a Play for Sidney Poitier. Lloyd Richards became the first African-American to direct a play on Broadway, while Claudia McNeill became the first Black woman to be nominated for the Tony Award for Best Supporting Actress. Hansberry became the first female African-American playwright to have a play on Broadway. It took producer Philip Rose 18 months to raise the money to get it to the stage but when he finally pulled it off, it made history. Lorraine Hansberry wrote A Raisin in the Sun when she was just 29. He was with me as I flew down here, and it’s just a reminder to me of the shoulders I’m standing on,” she says. I’m so glad they didn’t throw that box of Playbills away, because how precious is this memento! My parents were big theatre folk and took us as often as they could, so this was like my Dad on my shoulder, saying, ‘I’m here with you’. “When I saw it, I was like, ‘Wow!’ It was so fortuitous for me to find it at this particular time, getting ready to do the show, and I said to myself, ‘Dad is with me’. Samuels had never heard her father talk about it, but he had clearly seen the landmark production. To her surprise, among the many programs was a Playbill from the 1959 Broadway production of Lorraine Hansberry’s play A Raisin in the Sun, starring Sidney Poitier, Ruby Dee and Claudia McNeill. “Every show I did, if he was not, he would ask me to bring home an extra Playbill, so I was sure there would be several of them in that box.” Samuels’ father was a jazz pianist and loved going to the theatre. Gayle Samuels and the Playbill from the 1959 Broadway production of A Raisin in the Sun, found in a box of her father’s things.