"A Raisin in the Sun" Shines Again
on Broadway- with Two Larchmont Producers
by Joan R. Simon
(April 13, 2004) It may come as a surprise
to learn that behind one of the biggest revivals on Broadway
this
season,
A Raisin in the
Sun, are two Larchmont women: Ruth Hendel and Barbara Whitman.
They may not be getting the same publicity as Raisin stars
Sean Combs (aka P. Diddy), Tony-Award winner Audra McDonald
or Phylicia Rashad (of The Cosby Show), but they are working
enthusiastically behind the scenes as producers of A
Raisin in the Sun, which has been hailed as one of a handful of
great American plays.
Ruth Hendel with her two "children": A
Raisin in the Sun and Caroline, or Change
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What,
one might ask, do producers actually do? Hendel and Whitman
explained that
on every play there is a lead producer (or producers) who
conceives of the
project,
obtains
the
rights, and hires the major participants, such as the director
and casting agent. Financing the show is next and that
is when additional, “commercial” producers,
such as Hendel and Whitman, come in. Their job is both
to support the production financially and work to
make
it a success. Among their duties is attendance at frequent
management meetings, where decisions on advertising, sales,
marketing and promotion are made.
As befits a theater producer, the phone was constantly ringing
as Hendel spoke with the Gazette from her home study, surrounded
by shelves piled high with theater memorabilia and scripts
from would-be dramatists. She described her ordinary suburban
life after graduate school in communications and research
work at ABC-TV. “I was a typical soccer mom,” she
related, and all three of her children graduated from Mamaroneck
High School. For six years she ran a PTA after-school club
at Murray Avenue School called “Mrs. Hendel’s
First Stages of Drama.”
Barbara Whitman: A producer for Raisin in the Sun |
Whitman was an actress for ten years with summer stock and
national touring companies before settling into the suburbs
with her two sons who are now in the 7th and 9th grades in
the Mamaroneck schools. Juggling her children’s schedule
and a PTA treasurer’s position, Whitman is also studying
at Columbia’s MFA program in Theater Management and
Producing, which she describes as “an MBA for theater.” She
added, “What’s interesting for me now is that
when I sit at these production meetings, this time it’s
real instead of theoretical.”
Whitman’s husband, David Carlyon, has thespian roots
as well. An actor and former theater professor at the University
of Michigan, he also worked for several years as a circus
clown with Ringling Brothers. That experience inspired him
to write Dan Rice: The Most Famous Man You’ve
Never Heard Of about the famous 19th century clown
and showman. The entire Carlyon family participated in the
Semi-Royal
Shakespeare Company’s March production of A
Comedy of Errors, with the
kids on stage and Carlyon volunteering as an acting coach.
Whitman, not
surprisingly, served as
a producer.
While Raisin is Whitman’s first
production venture, Hendel has been involved with non-profit
theater groups as
well as Off-Broadway and Broadway shows for several years.
Among her hits are the highly acclaimed The Exonerated,
which ran for a year and a half before closing last month; Metamorphoses,
which won the 2002 Drama Desk Award for Best Play and the
2002 Tony for Best Director; and Golda’s Balcony which
is currently running at the Helen Hayes Theater. But Hendel
hastens to add that not all of her ventures have been successful: “We’re
not even going to talk about the bloopers.”
Hendel is also enthusiastic about her involvement with Tony
Kushner’s new musical Caroline, or Change,
which she refers to as her other “child” this
spring. The successful off-Broadway show moved uptown to the
Eugene O'Neill Theatre on May 2.
The revival of A Raisin in the Sun, which
was originally staged in 1959 as the first Broadway play
written by a black
woman, is currently in previews at the Royale Theater (tickets
through telecharge.com/raisininthesun).
It opens on April 26, with a limited run ending July 11.
Hendel was pleased
to report that standing ovations have become the norm at
the preview performances. Her eyes lit up when she took a
call from a friend as he was leaving last Wednesday’s
matinee. He enthusisastically reported, “It was incredible – the
best show I’ve seen. There were even people crying
during the performance.”
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