A Raisin in the Sun, reviewed by Sofia Riano Alonso-Olea

Have you ever felt lonely?  Have you ever felt isolated from society? Trying to fit in as much as you could; changing your way of life. Waking up in the morning as a poor person with not much to give and ending the day with 10,000 dolars on your hands. For you and for your family, ¨money is life¨-said Walter out loud-but, is this true? Should it be this way? Have you ever think how people´s dreams are? Do our happiness and dreams depend on money?

            Raisin in the Sun, written by Lorraine Hansberry and directed by Liesl Tommy did such an extraordinary good job at the BU Theatre. In a crowded apartment in the South Side of Chicago, an African- American family keep seeking and yearning for a different and better way of life. For some of them, happiness means money, for others, such as the sister, happiness means knowing where you come from and not changing as white men want them to. Every member of the house has different perspective of what hapinness means and about how they can find it. ¨Goodbye missery, I would never want to see your ugly face again¨ screamed Walter´s crying wife, while a spotlight was just focusing on her, as if no one else but her was there.

           

            Even though this story may seem very repetitive and boring because we all know how negros were treated in the past, Raisin in the Sun  give us the story from one of those families, as if we were part of that circular and rotating house in which you could see everything that was going on from another point of view; how the father, Walter, was an alcoholic, selfish man, how Travis was treated or how Walter´s sister wanted to be independent and make her own money by being a doctor, without depending on anyone but herself.