Washington on Broadway

Hollywood star sets aside his glamorous life to return to the stage with one of America’s greatest plays A Raisin in the Sun

Published: Tue 1 Apr 2014, 9:48 PM

Last updated: Fri 3 Apr 2015, 6:35 PM

The Denzel Washington you meet backstage at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre is not exactly living a glamorous Hollywood life. He’s more like a college kid during finals.

He wears a black Yankee cap, black sweat pants and blue sneakers. There are free weights on a counter and a bottle of diet cola. Notebooks and papers are everywhere. He’s fighting off the New York chill with some chicken noodle soup laced with hot sauce.

“Have a seat,” the star says, waving to a banged-up sofa and settling down in his own seat in front of a makeshift desk made from a mini-fridge. “I’ve got good heat here.”

Good heat, comfortable clothes, soup — the unfussy Broadway version of Denzel Washington seems completely in his element as he puts the finishing touches on one of America’s greatest plays, A Raisin in the Sun.

“It’s just a great opportunity — that’s how I look at it,” says Washington. “It’s like getting back to your roots. It’s going good. But around about the 70th show, I might be going, ‘What am I doing?’”

Like an athlete in training and currently dressed the part, Washington has poured himself into the work, filling two composition books with notes and leaving every page of his script highlighted, underlined or annotated.

The first notebook starts with the poem A Dream Deferred by Langston Hughes, the work that helped inspire the play, which Washington has handwritten.

The play marks Washington’s first return to Broadway since his Tony Award-winning turn in Fences in 2010 and every preview has been sold out, with top premium tickets going for as much as $348.

“Denzel? Listen, he’s a Stradivarius,” says co-star LaTanya Richardson Jackson, an old friend and Samuel L. Jackson’s wife. “He’s so versatile. It’s so wonderful being on the stage with him.”

Set in 1950s Chicago, A Raisin in the Sun centers on the struggling Younger family, who anxiously await a $10,000 insurance check — and the ensuing squabbles over how to spend it.

Washington plays Walter Lee, a chauffeur with dreams of opening a liquor store, a role made famous by Sidney Poitier, who played it in the original 1959 production and reprised it in a 1961 movie. In a twist, this revival is in the same theater where Poitier debuted the play.

How far has Washington gone in his research? It turns out all the way to Poitier’s home. The two actors recently met to talk about the role and when Poitier rose to act out scenes, Washington pulled out his cell phone to film it (“As you can see, I’m no cameraman,” he jokes as he shares the jerky images).

“He’s so generous and complimentary and he was like, ‘Oh you’re going to kill. You’re going to be better than I was,’ and all this stuff,” Washington says. “He’s just a sweet, gentle man.”

The revival of A Raisin in the Sun hasn’t been completely without drama: Last month, the cast was shook up when Diahann Carroll pulled out and Richardson Jackson stepped in as the family matriarch.

“Diahann realised she just couldn’t handle it, physically. If we live long enough, we’re all going to come to that place where we go, like, ‘OK,’” says Washington. “Even I had my doubts in the beginning. Can I remember all this?”

At 64, she’s only five years older than Washington, 59, but he notes that a 32-year-old Poitier played Walter Lee opposite 41-year-old Claudia McNeil in the original Broadway production.

“No, you can’t have a baby at 5 but I don’t think you can have one at 9, either,” jokes Washington. “That’s acting.”

This time on Broadway, Washington has changed a few things, starting with his Playbill bio, which had grown unwieldy. He sliced it down: “It was really blowing my own horn,” he says. “I don’t need to advertise. I got the part.”

He also dedicates his performance to the late Tony Scott, who directed Washington in such films as Crimson Tide and Man on Fire. “I thought about Tony and I wanted to mention Tony,” says Washington.

His mother plans to come to New York to see her son in the play and another who has promised to come and cheer is none other than Poitier. “I said to him, ‘Don’t come early,’” Washington says. “He said, ‘No, I’m coming.’ I said, ‘Not early. And don’t tell me when.’” AP