Unlike her characters, the Younger family, Hansberry’s upbringing was middle class. Her father, Carl, was a developer who split large houses in run-down Chicago areas into tiny apartments called kitchenettes, precisely the sort of roach-infested place from which the Youngers are trying to extricate themselves.

The family consists of Walter Lee Younger, a chauffeur; his wife, Ruth, who works as a maid; his mother, Lena; his son, Travis; and his student sister, Beneatha – all crammed into three rooms and sharing a bathroom with their neighbours. The forced proximity and relentless grind of poverty have caused tensions within the family which the arrival of a cheque for ten thousand dollars – a life insurance payout on the death of Lena’s husband – appears to alleviate. All of them have their own dream: Lena and Ruth to find a house they can own; Beneatha to pay for medical school; and Walter Lee to go into partnership in a liquor store, a project his mother rejects. But dreams have a habit of turning sour. Lena puts down a deposit on a house in a white neighbourhood and the family receives an unsolicited visit from a representative of the ‘welcoming committee’. When Lena finally relents and agrees to Walter’s plans, disaster strikes. The play’s ending, which Black radicals such as Harold Cruse at the time of its première saw as a sentimental, happy one, is far from that. The Younger family have many trials ahead of them.

Were A Raisin in the Sun simply another slice-of-life play it would merely have relevance in historical terms. But Hansberry skilfully and with remarkable prescience juggles an extensive number of themes. Racism, sexism, capitalism (Walter, in his blind belief that money equals success, has been often compared to Willy Loman), questions of black assimilation versus a reclaiming of African heritage, and anti-colonialism are woven into the Younger’s story. In an extraordinary speech, Joseph Asagai, a Nigerian suitor of Beneatha, foretells the complex future of post-colonial Africa, which he accepts as an inevitable part of history.

For the first main-stage Australian production of this classic play, the Sydney Theatre Company has assembled a strong cast. Wesley Enoch has, as he did with Brandon Jacobs-Jenkins’s Appropriate (STC, 2021) turned a disparate group of actors into a tight ensemble.

In a powerhouse performance, Bert LaBonté’s Walter is a man of manic energy and barely controlled rage. An impractical dreamer, he uses drink and fantasy to soften harsh reality. He is moving in a speech to Travis, in which he conjures an alternative reality where he is able to send his son to any university he desires: ‘Just tell me what you want to be – and you’ll be it … You just name it son … and I hand you the world!’ As his dreams implode and he crawls towards his mother in abasement, LaBonté’s performance reaches a shattering emotional climax.

Bert LaBonté in the Sydney Theatre Company's production of A Raisin in the Sun (Joseph Mayer)

Zahra Newman’s Ruth is a strong woman reaching breaking point. Newman is especially touching as Ruth tries to work out what has fractured her relationship with Walter. The tone of voice she uses when talking on the phone to Walter’s employer tells us all we need to know about the humiliating roles that must be played in order to survive.

Beneatha has not yet been ground down by life, and in Angela Mahlatjie’s hands she is a lively, argumentative presence. The contrast between her two suitors – the African Joseph and the bourgeois African-American George – could have seemed a bit schematic were they not as well acted by Adolphus Waylee and Leinad Walker, respectively.

As chairman of the welcoming committee, Jacob Warner has the mixture of mild reasonableness and underlying threat exactly right.

The one miscalculation is the way in which Enoch has directed Nancy Denis to play the nosy neighbour, Mrs Johnson. In a scene that makes an important point about the dangers of attempted assimilation, Denis plays Mrs Johnson in exactly the broad stereotypical style Childress was condemning.

Mel Page’s set captures the seediness of the apartment, and her costumes firmly anchor the play in the time of its writing.

It has taken more than sixty years for A Raisin in the Sun to arrive in Australia, but this production has done it proud.

A Raisin in the Sun (Sydney Theatre Company) continues at the Wharf 1 Theatre until 15 October 2022. Performance attended: 3 September.