After announcing a new Creative Partnership with Headlong earlier this year, Oxford Playhouse is thrilled to host the pioneering theatre company at their new ‘home ground’ for a landmark production of A Raisin in the Sun. Welcoming them back to the city in which they formed as Oxford Stage Company fifty years ago, Headlong’s production will play on the Main Stage from Wednesday 2 to Saturday 5 October.

The rarely performed American classic, A Raisin in the Sun broke barriers as the first play by a Black woman on Broadway, for which Hansberry received the Drama Critics’ Circle Award. This major new revival will be directed by Tinuke Craig (Trouble in Butetown, Jitney, The Color Purple).

​First performed in 1959, this revolutionary family drama follows the Youngers, an intergenerational Black family living in the South Side of Chicago in a small, rented apartment on Chicago’s South Side. Their beloved father has died, and the money from his life insurance policy could change their lives.

Mama wants to put down roots in a home of her own. Her daughter Beneatha has her heart set on becoming a doctor. But her son Walter Lee thinks the money is his to spend — and he’s willing to sacrifice his values and his family to get what he wants. Each must face what it means to escape the confines of a segregated society. How do you create a meaningful life in a world designed to keep you down?

Offering a unique historical perspective on the civil rights movement, this celebrated and timeless drama remains an integral work in the American canon. Rooted in realism, Hansberry’s play, full of humour and heart, remains relevant and powerful in a world still divided by inequality.

Gilbert Kyem Jnr will play George (The MilkmansPurpose, Love Speech), Kenneth Omole (Top Boy, Macbeth, Barbershop Chronicles) will play Joseph/Bobo and DoreeneBlackstock (Sex Education, Unknown Rivers) will play Lena. The role of Travis will be performed by Jayden Dias, Josh Ndlovu and Adiel Magaji in Leeds and Oxford.

They join the previously announced Joséphine-Fransilja Brookman (High Times and Dirty Monsters, A Pigment of Your Imagination, Macbeth ) who will play Beneatha, Cash Holland (A Streetcar Named Desire, Odyssey, Julius Caesar ) who will play Ruth, Solomon Israel (Jitney, TheBarber Shop Chronicles, Miss Littlewood) who will play Walter Lee and Jonah Russell (Arms and the Man, I, Joan, The Brilliant Friend) who will play Karl.

The regional venue is thrilled to welcome Cash Holland back to the city after gripping Oxford audiences in the Shakespeare’s Globe touring show of Julius Caesar which played in a purpose-built open-air theatre in Magdalen College School Gardens, a production that was in association with The Playhouse and Oxford Festival of the Arts.

The full creative team are Tinuke Craig (Director), Cécile Trémolières (Set Designer) Maybelle Laye (Costume Designer), Dominique Hamilton (Wigs, Hair & Make up Designer) Max Pappenheim (Composer & Sound Designer), Joshua Pharo (Lighting Designer), Sarita Piotrowski (Movement Director), Haruka Kuroda (Fight & Intimacy Director), Aundrea Fudge (Voice & Dialect Coach), Phillipe Cato (Associate Director), Ruta Irbite (Design Associate), Luke Haywood (Lighting Associate), Lotte Hines (Casting Director) and Joi Gresham (Literary Trustee).

A Raisin in the Sun is a Headlong, Leeds Playhouse, Lyric Hammersmith Theatre and Nottingham Playhouse co-production.

Director Tinuke Craig said: “It is a privilege to once again work alongside the creative powerhouse that is Headlong in their 50th year after collaborating on Jitney in 2021 whilst continuing my ongoing Artistic Associate role with Lyric Hammersmith Theatre. Now, the time is right to bring Lorraine Hansberry’s classic A Raisin in the Sun back to the stage in a relevant, fresh new production for today.”

Headlong have been thrilling audiences for 50 years with their bold and original storytelling. Their celebrated work includes A View from the Bridge, 1984 and People, Places and Things which have been enjoyed by audiences on the West End and across the country.