'The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window' revival

‘THE SIGN IN SIDNEY BRUSTEIN’S WINDOW’: Rachel Brosnahan & Oscar Issac. Photo: Julieta Cervantes.

THE SIGN IN SIDNEY BRUSTEIN’S WINDOW
By Lorraine Hansberry
Directed by Anne Kauffman
Through July 2, 2023
James Earl Jones Theatre
138 West 48th Street,
212-239-6210, https://thesignonbroadway.com/

By Scott Harrah

The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window recently transferred to Broadway after a successful run at Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM). The play was the second work by Lorraine Hansberry after A Raisin in the Sun and never found an audience when it was originally produced in 1964. This is an old-fashioned three-act drama that’s far from perfect and certainly dated, but it’s worth seeing simply to witness amazing performances and experience the long-gone era of epic three-act stage dramas that petered out by the early 1970s. In addition, the show stars Rachel Brosnahan from “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” as well as film star Oscar Isaac.

While A Raisin in the Sun remains a timeless, simplistic saga of African Americans in the 1960, The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window is a complex story primarily focusing on a white family in Greenwich Village, with many subplots and characters, including a gay male neighbor, a corrupt politician, a Black artist and others.

Ms. Hansberry’s second play is the saga of Jewish bohemian Sidney Brustein (Oscar Isaac) and the disintegration of his marriage to Iris (Rachel Brosnahan), a young woman from Oklahoma who works as a waitress but yearns to be an actress. Sidney’s wife Iris (Brosnahan) is the ambitious, progressive sister who feels trapped in her marriage. She is nothing like her older sister Mavis (Miriam Silverman), described as “the Mother of Middle Class itself,” who married well, is always impeccably dressed but is racist and antisemitic and initially has much contempt for her brother-in-law, but warms up to him later in the show. The youngest sister Gloria (Gus Birney) is a beautiful young woman who claims to be an “international model.”

Sidney is a struggling artist/writer who has just bought the Village Crier, an alternative weekly newspaper he cannot afford. Wife Iris is tired of slinging hash as a waitress and her marriage to Sidney hangs tenuously by a proverbial thread as she longs to break into acting. Their marital clashes are quite intense throughout the first act. Meanwhile, Sidney has reluctantly decided to have the newspaper endorse local politician Wally O’Hara (Andy Grotelueschen). In addition, Sidney and Iris are nervous about their friend Alton Scales (Julian De Niro), an African American young man who wants to marry Iris’s younger sister Gloria. Initially, Alton has no idea what Gloria’s real job is.

The first two acts before the intermission are full of tension and politics and are often riveting with lots of dialogue and multiple monologues tying everything together but the third final act unravels with melodramatic twists and scenes that are not fully explained, making the outcome ultimately unsatisfying. If Ms. Hansberry had taken the narrative on a more traditional path, it could easily have been the story of a man who married into a family with three troubled sisters, but hardly the type Chekhov wrote about. The Parodus sisters all come from Oklahoma, of supposedly Greek and Cherokee extraction. However, with all the various characters and subplots happening simultaneously, the narrative is choppy, uneven and mired with confusion. It is indeed understandable why this show is rarely revived, but it remains a thought-provoking play and depicts the political turmoil of the 1960s quite well. Many will see the show because “Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” star Rachel Brosnahan is the leading lady, and she is consistently great throughout the show but in reality, the character of Iris is not a huge role. Regardless, the whole cast works well together under the direction of Anne Kauffman. Oscar Isaac as Sidney and Miriam Silverman as Mavis are especially noteworthy and both give natural, outstanding performances.

Editor’s Note: The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window received two 2023 Tony Award nominations, one for Best Revival of a Play and one for Miriam Silverman for Best Performance by an Actress in a Featured Role in a Play.

Edited by Scott Harrah
Published May 3, 2023
Reviewed at April 30, 2023 press performance.