The tight construction and naturalistic dialogue gained notice for the playwright and for Sidney Poitier, an emerging young actor in the pivotal role of Walter Lee Younger — who struggles for his manhood against social and cultural conventions that would deny it.

The play has been hailed as one of the best American plays ever written. It ran for over two years on Broadway and was made into a 1961 movie, also starring Poitier. It also enjoyed a much-publicized New York revival last year starring Phylicia Rashad and Sean (P. Diddy) Combs as the family matriarch and her troubled adult son.

The plot centers on an insurance check for $10,000 that Mama Younger is about to receive as settlement of her dead husband's policy. Everyone in the household has personal plans for how to spend the money. Mama wants to use it for a down payment on a house. Walter Lee wants to invest it in a liquor store and quit his demeaning chauffeur job. A representative from the white neighborhood offers a bribe for them not to move and implies opposition if they do.

Director Brad Powell lets the play's strong action line propel the characters.

Walter Lee feels stymied not only by a white society, but by his own family: "I got to take hold of this here world, Baby! And a woman will say: Eat your eggs and go to work. ... That is just what's wrong with the colored woman in this world ... don't understand about building their men up and making 'em feel like they somebody. Like they can do something."

Mama is slow to realize that her efforts to hold the family together are inadvertently keeping her son from assuming his necessary role and gives him full charge of a large part of the insurance money: "There ain't nothing worth holding on to, money, dreams, nothing else if it means it's going to destroy my boy. ... It ain't much, but it's all I got in the world and I'm putting it in your hands. I'm telling you to be the head of this family from now on like you supposed to be."

Della Graham assumes the role of Mama with full authority and great warmth, earning her place on the couch as a benevolent disciplinarian. Graham's real life son Trevor plays Walter Lee with less polish, but with great personal feeling. Together they orchestrate the characters' opposing wills into a climax of operatic proportions when the money is lost and everyone's dreams appear to be crushed.

But the salvation of Hansberry's drama is that amid the personal tragedies there is hope that the characters can arise from their despair: "He finally come into his manhood today, didn't he? Kind of like a rainbow after the rain. ..."

Supporting roles are well done. Lillian Jones adds a comic touch through her dedicated stubbornness as Beneatha and Anette Kauahikaua is consistent in the largely reactive role of wife Ruth. Judith Henry is delightful as the gossipy Mrs. Johnson, and Derrick Brown seethes with idealism as the Nigerian student. John Mussack is appropriately propelled by nervous energy as the representative from the white neighborhood.

Ed Pickard's set is a convincingly cramped tenement apartment, in the equally tiny playing space at TAG's Yellow Brick Studio.