Kwame Kwei-Armah’s Beneatha’s Place is a response to two seminal American plays about race: Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun (1959) and Bruce Norris’s Clybourne Park (2010), both of which look at racial tensions in 1950s Chicago. Kwei-Armah’s play moves Beneatha, a character from A Raisin in the Sun, to Laos. The first act, set in 1959, sees Beneatha marrying Joseph Asagai, a medical student involved in Nigeria’s independence movement. The second act takes place 50 years later, when Beneatha, now widowed and teaching at a university in California, is trying to make her colleagues understand the importance of African Studies. The show has its U.K. premiere at the Young Vic, where Kwei-Armah is the artistic director. —Jensen Davis