Jonathan Storm: In 'Raisin,' Combs can't get past his inner Diddy

Sean Combs is deferring no dreams. Not content to pack 'em in on Broadway (despite decidedly mixed reviews), the hip-hop mogul brings his one-note acting self, along with most of the rest of the stage cast, to TV tomorrow in a three-hour revival of

Raisin in the Sun

, beginning at 8 p.m. on 6ABC.

His son in the show (Justin Martin) gets to call him Daddy, but we're supposed to forget the Diddy, Daddy, Puffy names that came before, and the money and influence that he earned with them that got him this production. Instead, we're supposed to concentrate on Walter Lee Younger, the overgrown adolescent who supposedly grows into a man in Lorraine Hansberry's landmark creation.

But Combs brings just too much baggage and not enough chops. Compare him with Phylicia Rashad, the mother in this timeworn production of a family struggling on Chicago's Southside in the '50s. Rashad played a famous mommy on TV once, but you don't see Clair Huxtable spilling out all over the place.

Rashad, rightly, won a Tony as a leading lady for her 2004 Broadway performance in

Raisin

. Fires burn when she shares the screen with Audra MacDonald, who won one of her four Tonys playing Rashad's daughter on Broadway. You can see how some people make Shakespearean comparisons to the play, and you can see how the two could get matching Emmys for their Tonys, even if it is a downward stretch to call MacDonald (

Private Practice

's Naomi Bennett, among nine million other recent roles) a supporting actress here.

With little luck elsewhere in the performances, we're reduced to the play's story. It was prescient in 1959, with a new generation of African Americans seeking their own path toward better lives and equality, even as they are battered, not only by The Man, but by unmotivated members, both high-toned and lowdown, of their own race.

In these hands, however, it seems more a collection of cliches than the revered semiautobiographical work of the first black woman playwright to land on Broadway, a woman whose father fought a restrictive racial covenant all the way to the Supreme Court to keep his family's home in a white Chicago neighborhood in the '30s.

Nip/Tuck

's Sanaa Lathan plays the thoroughly modern Beneathea, Walter's sister. She was nominated for a Tony, too, in 2004, but shows only a little more range than her more famous castmate here. At least, she manages to infuse some energetic pleasure into an ambitious character fascinated by her African roots and by a fellow college student from Nigeria (David Oyelowo).

A Raisin in the Sun

opened on Broadway March 11, 1959, with Sidney Poitier playing Walter, Ruby Dee his mother, and Louis Gossett Jr. the snobby, rich college boy George Murchison. A highly regarded feature film, with most of the same cast, was released in 1961. A 1989 TV movie starred Danny Glover and Esther Rolle.

This production has two noted executive producers besides Combs, whom, unlike his character, no one has ever accused of being a bad businessman. Craig Zadan and Neil Meron have combined to produce marvelous film and TV revivals of such musicals as

Hairspray

,

Chicago

,

The Music Man

and

Gypsy

.

Settings and costumes are done with loving care, and if the film lacks punch, it still can serve as a remarkable teaching tool for many of today's children, black and white, who have no idea of how things were back in the day.

Broken into segments, it could be a week's lesson plan in high school history, and with what's-his-name in the lead, the kids might even pay attention and learn something about those momentous times.

Raisin

in the Sun

8 tomorrow night on 6ABC