Oscar Isaac and Rachel Brosnahan star in her play about fashionable commitment to social change.
Yet Hansberry resists a structure as simple as that. The drama has all the compelling antsiness of a sophomore album trying not to hit the same beats as an acclaimed debut. Through David , a gay playwright upstairs who is writing something about two men living in a refrigerator, Hansberry references more experimental work — another character jokingly calls him Jean Genet — and seems to stage an argument with herself about the value of sticking to realism.
In contrast to those moments, some engines of the plot are more shopworn, particularly the arc between the revolutionary Alton and Iris’s sister, Gloria , whose jet-set lifestyle is soon revealed to be bought and paid for. The tragic white-passing idealist and the tragic sex worker are both predictable, acting more as symbols than as people. Better are the characters with more contradictions, like Sidney and Iris, whose sparring and jousting Isaac and Brosnahan seem to revel in.
Hansberry’s play holds up people like Mavis, Sidney, and Iris to the light for inspection. What’s to be done with these selfish, self-regarding purported allies? Then, like someone cutting open rough-hewn rock, she sets the actions of her plot upon them. The play is harsh, but as it pares its hero down, it reveals something hopeful. For Sidney, posting a sign isn’t much in itself, but it goads him onward, the way a Greek tragedy pushes everyone toward calamity and then a clarity of sight.
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