Last night a slew of stars attended the opening night of the revival of Lorraine Hansberry’s “A Raison In The Sun” starring Denzel Washington, Latanya Richardson Jackson, Sophie Okonedo, Anika Noni Rose, Stephen Mckinley Henderson, David Cromer, Bryce Clyde Jenkins, Jason Dirden, and Sean Patrick Thomas at the Barrymore Theatre.
Notables who walked the red carpet included Samuel L. Jackson, Billy Crystal, Michael Strahan, Phylicia Rashad, Spike And Tonya Lee, Judith Jamison, Julianne Moore Tyson And Kimberly Chandler, Grace Hightower, Melissa Leo, Gretchen Mol, Bridget Moynihan, Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Cederic The Entertainer, Maggie Grace, Naturi Naughton, Dave And Tonya Winfield, Yaya Dacosta, Ashanti, Paul Dano, Zoe Kazan, Aonika Leon Preston Robinson, Maria Horsford, Pauletta Pearson Washington, Sherry Bronfman and Ben Bronfman, to name a few.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cjg-nTsRdIw&feature=youtu.be
Samuel L Jackson was in attendance to support his wife Latanya Richardson Jackson, who stars in the show. “It’s a marvelous, marvelous piece of work that sustains, stands the test of time, even people coming up with additions to it like “Clybourne Park,” which was great and is an extension of this play, so hopefully tonight will see another re-imagining, there will be young people who have never seen the play before, parts of the audience that have never seen it that will rediscover this play and they’ll go out and look at some other things that Lorraine wrote, and look at some of the other things that people have done and be a part of the African American experience in another way,” Jackson told reporters.
Longtime Denzel Washington friend and collaborator Spike Lee also walked the red carpet. “It’s just a legacy, I’m glad that Scott Rudin and others brought it to broadway today,” he added.
Fun fact: The Barrymore Theatre is where the original 1959 production of the show was staged starring Sidney Poitier and Ruby Dee. Members of Lorraine Hansberry’s were in attendance. “It’s a lot about freedom, we were very involved in Civil Rights and open housing, we opened housing all the way from the University of Chicago all the way to Lake Michigan – that way we got a lake, and it was during The Great Migration from slavery, which is very dear to my heart … we liked to do things and change things and that was costly, we paid the price for that. Civil Rights is very expensive, but we won,” her family reflected.
Check out photos from the red carpet below:
