Tinuke Craig Archives - The Play Podcast

092 – A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry

by Douglas Schatz | Feb 10, 2025 | Podcast Episodes

01-Cash-Holland-and-Solomon-Israel-credit-Ikin-Yum-1876x1251

Cash Holland as Ruth
and Solomon Israel as Walter
A Raisin in the Sun
Lyric Hammersmith Theatre, London, October 2024
Photo by Ikin Yum

092 – A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry

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When Lorraine Hansberry’s ground-breaking play, A Raisin in the Sun, opened at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre in New York in 1959, its author became the first African American female author to have a play performed on Broadway, and she did so with her debut at the age of 29. Hansberry’s drama of personal dreams was ground-breaking because of its realist portrait of a black working-class family. As the writer James Baldwin wrote: “never before, in the entire history of the American theatre, had so much of the truth of black people’s lives been seen on stage.”

In the two years following its New York premiere, A Raisin in the Sun was translated into 35 languages and performed all over the world. Hansberry’s own screenplay of A Raisin in the Sun was filmed in 1961, with Sidney Poitier and Ruby Dee. Tragically, Hansberry died from pancreatic cancer five years later at the age of only 34. Her play’s portrait of personal dreams and public prejudice remains as funny, moving and relevant as ever, more than sixty years on.

We record this episode very shortly after an acclaimed new production of the play has finished a UK tour, concluding at the Lyric Hammersmith theatre in London. I very much enjoyed the production and the chance it offered to delve into this landmark play, so I am delighted to be joined by the production’s director, Tinuke Craig.

Tinuke Craig

Tinuke Craig trained at LAMDA and at the National Theatre Studio. In 2014 she won the Genesis Future Director award and was the Gate Theatre’s associate director from 2015 to 2016. She has worked with the National Theatre, the Royal Shakespeare Company, and the Old Vic in London, where from 2021-2023 she was Baylis Director. In November 2024 Tinuke was named Associate Artistic Director at Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre.

Her directing credits include the RSC’s The School for Scandal, The Colour Purple at the Curve in Leicester, Sarah Kane’s Crave at Chichester Festival Theatre, and a wonderful production of August Wilson’s play Jitney at Leeds and the Old Vic Theatre, which inspired our own episode on that play with Tony Marshall and Wil Johnson from the cast of her production.

Recommended Play

Tinuke recommended August: Osage County by Tracy Letts.

Photo Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre.

We have footnotes for this episode …

The Footnotes that accompany our episode on Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun, include notes on Nina Simone’s ‘Young, Gifted and Black’, the Hansberry family’s fight for their home, the character of George, and how music underlines different cultural identities for the characters in the play.

Footnotes for Patrons

Become a Patron!

Since I launched The Play Podcast in April 2020, I have managed to eschew any form of advertising or sponsorship, and I would like to continue to produce the podcast without doing so. I therefore invite you to help me to continue to make the podcast by becoming a Patron. Additional benefits available to Patrons include Footnotes on the plays covered in the podcast, as well as early access to The Play Review. For details click here Thank you very much for listening and for your support. Douglas

The Texts

If you are interested in buying the play text or other related books, we’d be delighted if you choose to purchase them from our selected partners Bookshop.org and Blackwell’s. Not only will you be supporting independent booksellers, we will also earn a small commission on every book you purchase, which helps to keep the podcast going. Click on the cover to buy from our chosen partner. Thank you.

115 – The Dance of Death by August Strindberg

Oct 6, 2026 | Podcast Episodes

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August Strindberg’s The Dance of Death is set in a remote army base on the coast of Sweden, where an army captain and his wife are trapped together in an unhappy marriage. The captain, bitter at his lack of promotion, and his wife, frustrated at having been forced to give up her career as an actress, occupy their empty hours tearing into each other in a brutal dance of mutual cruelty.

Strindberg’s scorching portrait of marital strife was written in 1900, but has had a lasting influence. Arthur Miller dubbed Strindberg, “the mad inventor of modern theatre”, and echoes of his unflinching dissection of marital discord can be seen in the plays of Edward Albee, Tennessee Williams, Eugene O’Neill, and John Osborne.

Sir Richard Eyre adapted and directed a wonderful production of Dance of Death at the Orange Tree Theatre in Richmond upon Thames earlier this year, and I am delighted that Sir Richard joins me in this episode to guide us through Strindberg’s blistering onslaught on marriage.

114 – Love’s Labour’s Lost by William Shakespeare

Sep 22, 2026 | Podcast Episodes

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William Shakespeare’s Love’s Labour’s Lost is described on the title page in the first publication of its text in 1598 as “A Pleasant Conceited Comedie.” I imagine that the epithets were intended to highlight the play’s courtly aesthetic, its frothy merry-go-round of courtship, and above all perhaps, its ostentatiously intricate word play. For it is a play rich in the love and perils of language.

I am joined to assay Shakespeare’s conceited comedy by the Artistic Director of the Orange Tree Theatre in Richmond upon Thames, Tom Littler. In the summer of 2026 Tom adapted and directed a magical double bill of Shakespeare, producing Love’s Labour’s Lost and Much Ado About Nothing in repertory, and staging them both ‘en plein air’.

113 – Arcadia by Tom Stoppard

Aug 24, 2026 | Podcast Episodes

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Tom Stoppard’s 1993 play, Arcadia, is viewed by many as his finest play, renowned for the breadth of its intellectual interrogations and its formal invention. The play is a structural masterpiece of ideas, as well as a teasing detective story, joyous comedy, and emotionally rich exploration of love and loss.

As we record this episode a wonderful new production of Arcadia is playing at the Duke of York’s theatre in London’s West End, following its acclaimed run at the Old Vic theatre earlier this year. I am delighted to share the challenge and the pleasure of exploring Stoppard’s dazzling drama with the director of the new production, Carrie Cracknell.