Hansberry, Lorraine - Stanley Kauffmann
STANLEY KAUFFMANN
Miss Hansberry's dialogue [in her screenplay adaptation for the film A Raisin in the Sun] is generally commonplace and occasionally ridiculous, her perception of character is on the level of Samuel French's catalogue of amateur plays, and her sense of structure is primitive….
The bulk of the play is garden-variety, lower-class domestic drama. Except for the daughter's Nigerian suitor and the superficial discussion of Negro modes of thought that he provokes, this could be, up to this point, any John Golden suburban play of the twenties transferred to a Negro setting. Now the author, running out of plot and determined that her story shall not only be about Negroes but about race problems, brings us to the barricades. The house on which the mother has paid the deposit is in a white neighborhood, and predictable trouble ensues…. (p. 152)
[The play's action] is set in a context of blatantly contrasting sudden entrances …...
[The entire page is 362 words long]
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