Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun is one of those touchstone plays, like Death of a Salesman or Long Day’s Journey Into Night, that feels familiar even to those who haven’t seen it. Every decade or so, New York sees another revival—the last two were on Broadway, the ill-fated 2004 staging with Sean “P. Diddy” Combs and the 2014 one with the megastar power of Denzel Washington—and now we have a new production at downtown’s Public Theater.

 

It’s a good thing too, for Hansberry’s invigorating 1959 play about the Youngers, a struggling Black family on Chicago’s south side, intelligently blends comedy and tragedy in a pinpoint study of social, economic and political injustice that’s still sadly relevant. At the Public, director Robert O’Hara catches some of those qualities, and even though his three-plus-hour production often drags, there’s always another potent or prophetic Hansberry line of dialogue to propel it forward.

 

There’s also a formidable cast. As Lena, the matriarch of the Younger family, Tonya Pinkins has a powerful presence that’s imposing whether she’s browbeating or being tender. As Lena’s daughter, the wonderfully named Beneatha, Paige Gilbert gives an amusing but pungent portrait of a young woman dealing with a crushingly anti-female and anti-minority culture, studying to be a doctor until she discovers her African heritage.

 

As Lena’s beloved older son, Walter Lee, Francois Battiste arrestingly embodies the accumulating desperation of a man who feels like he’s always failing his family, no matter what he does. In a canny bit of casting, Francois’ actual son, Toussaint Battiste, plays Walter Lee’s son Travis, with a shrewdness that belies the young actor’s years. (Battiste shares the role with another youngster, Camden McKinnon.)

 

Finally, there's Mandi Masden’s lovely, subtle performance as Walter Lee’s harried wife Ruth, who has a melancholic quality beneath her steely exterior. Masden’s sensitive Ruth serves as the heart of Lorraine Hansberry’s timely tale, which survives O’Hara’s more leaden touches, such as making the ghost of Lena’s dead husband a speaking character and making literal what the Younger family will face when they finally move into the white neighborhood of Clybourne Park.