Since New York theaters reopened following the pandemic a year and a half ago, I have only twice encountered a standby line (where people wait in hope that tickets will become available immediately prior to show time): last May, when “Cyrano” with James McAvoy played BAM, and this past weekend, once again at BAM, where Oscar Isaac (who led Shakespeare in the Park productions before becoming a film star) and Rachel Brosnahan (“The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel”) are leading an extremely rare revival of Lorraine Hansberry’s muddled 1964 drama “The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window.”
The production (which originated in Chicago and is directed by Anne Kauffman) marks a well-meaning attempt to resuscitate the long-forgotten play, which closed on Broadway just two days before Hansberry (who had won acclaim as the playwright of “A Raisin in the Sun” and was also a well-known political activist) died at age 34 of cancer.
Isaac plays Sidney Brustein, a progressive-minded but immature and self-centered Jewish intellectual who lives in a Greenwich Village apartment in the early 1960s with his wife Iris (Brosnahan), a struggling actress. They are joined by a Black activist (Julian De Niro), a reform politician (Andy Grotelueschen), a gay experimental playwright (Glenn Fitzgerald), and Iris’ sisters, a suburban housewife (Miriam Silverman) and a prostitute (Gus Birney). Eventually, Sidney’s ideals come crashing down as virtually each person is revealed to be a morally compromised fraud.
“A Raisin in the Sun” is not just a great American play, but one of the best ever, and it is a shame that Hansberry did not live longer and continue writing. However, “The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window,” even as reworked by Kauffman and enlivened with a terrific cast and first-rate production values, remains a didactic, gloomy, long-winded (running just over three hours in length) mess of a drama.
Hansberry clearly had a lot to say about the artists that she worked alongside and their personal shortcomings, but it unfortunately did not come together into a coherent, critical-minded play but rather a plodding diatribe full of one-dimensional characters and melodramatic plot twists.
Still, there is no denying that the cast is excellent. Isaac and Brosnahan exert a physical intensity and sexual friskiness that propels much of the first half of the play. The production also has an unusually elaborate scenic design for a BAM production, including a shoebox-like apartment that is suspended above the stage floor plus a fire escape and upper rooftop level.
As another alternative for someone who is looking to experience more of Hansberry’s work, I recommend checking out the exhibition that has been set up in the lobby at BAM (which includes the life-size statute that debuted last year in Times Square), the 2017 documentary “Sighted Eyes/Feeling Heart,” multiple recently published biographies, or Hansberry’s own “To Be Young, Gifted and Black.”
BAM Harvey Theater, 651 Fulton St., bam.org. Through March 24.
