Awake and Sing

The propagandist playwrights of the 1930's have, both politically and artistically, plummeted out of popular favor. Their folksy brand of unflinching radicalism--often Marxism--makes sense neither to the new leftist nor the new liberal. And the grim seriousness with which they tackled boring problems like poverty and bigotry seems incomprehensible to an age of absurdists--whose drama generally preys on problems once or twice-removed from the realm of the reparable.

Clifford Odets has become a watchword for what is worst in the theatre of the '30's. Waiting for Lefty conjures up visions of a cast storming an audience with cries of "Strike!" and Golden Boy suggests the apotheosis of sentimentalism--or else a bad musical with Sammy Davis Jr. No one thinks of Odets as a great dialogue writer, which he was, or as a creator of remarkably distinctive characters, which he was also. We think of him as a soapbox in possession of a typewriter.

Like the soapbox, Odets has fallen into disuse. So, if nothing else, the Charles Playhouse is performing a small historical service in reviving the first, and what many consider the best, of Odets's plays, Awake and Sing.

The audience at Thursday night's opening seemed a little uncomfortable in Odets's presence, but quickly came to accept him, probably as a spiritual ancestor to such modern plays as Dear Me, the Sky is Falling and I Can Get it for You Wholesale. Lines like "I got a yen for her, and I don't mean a Chinese coin" were laughed at agreeably, and the play's genuinely tense moments drew genuinely tense reactions. All in all, it was hard to believe Awake and Sing could have meant something more, or even something different, to its '30's audiences than to its '60's audiences. It still works.

One of four Odets plays to appear on Broadway in 1935, Awake and Sing depicts a Bronx Jewish family of the early depression, stifled by conditions they won't try to change. Jacob, the grandfather, has taken what little Marx he knows to heart, and implores his family to leave the world better off than when they found it. But it takes Jacob's death--an apparent suicide--to convince his two grandchildren, Hennie and Ralph, to free themselves.

Structurally, the play has problems. A year's break between acts one and two seems unconvincing, and the first scene of the second act is contentless. But the lines, and the characters who speak them, achieve credibility and real beauty at the same time. "Baby, if you had a dog, I'd love the dog," says Moe Axelrod, the family satisfied businessman with little concern for family or boarder, to Hennie, whom he loves. Uncle Morty, a self-heritage, describes his success by saying, "Every Jew and Wop in the shop eats my bread and behind my back says, 'a sonofabitch.' I started from a poor boy who worked on an ice wagon for two dollars a week. Pop's right here--he'll tell you. I made it honest. In the whole industry, nobody's got a better name."

Director Michael Murray doesn't quite do justice to Awake and Sing, because he treats it overly like a period piece, pacing it gingerly and throwing varying degrees of strong accents into the mouths of his actors. The production abounds with significant pauses, which as a consequence lose all significance.

The performances are all individually creditable, but Will Lee and Bernard Wurger are too high-pitched for the rest of the cast, and particularly for Eda Reiss Merin's well-controlled, neatly uncliched portrayal of Bessie. The set, a brown concoction involving one compound flat and a good deal of well-chosen furniture, is just fine.