Estimated read time: 3-4 minutes
This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.
Apr. 18--How we would love to be rediscovering "Awake and Sing!," the Clifford Odets landmark the Lincoln Center Theater opened last night at the same Belasco Theatre that embraced the 1935 premiere.
Certainly, our time should be hungering for a drama about real values, about a family torn apart by materialism, about what the idealistic lefty grandfather condemns as a life "printed on dollar bills." Besides, this is the centenary of the birth of one of the country's earliest playwrights of conscience. A jolt of thrilling American theater history would be a reason to party.
Despite an intriguing cast, alas, Bartlett Sher's production is more conscientious than exciting, more respectful than galvanizing. This formation of the Bergers, the working-class Jewish family in the Bronx, seldom feels as if its members grew up on the same light and air. Odets' original three-act, two-intermission structure drains what little momentum gets built. His common-man poetry sounds more self-conscious than musical. Stranger still, the emotions feel dwarfed by the size of the theater.
We keep trying to put ourselves back in the Depression-era audience that heard these words in Harold Clurman's staging and from the mouths of the Group Theatre in its heyday. There are flashes of emotional intimacy, especially from Zoë Wanamaker as Bessie, the disillusioned matriarch whose ambitions for her grown son and daughter prove more toxic than supportive. Ned Eisenberg is also persuasive as Bessie's successful brother in the garment business.
Otherwise, we amuse ourselves with the delightful and audacious - if miscast - presence of Lauren Ambrose as Bessie's restless daughter Hennie and Mark Ruffalo as Moe, the bookie "with a yen" for her. Ambrose, unforgettable as young Claire in HBO's "Six Feet Under," neatly transforms for her Broadway debut into a lithe, tough-talking, independent soul with peach hair and a clingy dress to match. Similarly, Ruffalo is almost unrecognizable as the smart-mouth embittered war veteran with the fake leg and a soft heart.
Pablo Schreiber seems too tall to come from this family. But he has a lanky nervous energy as Ralph, the son who longs for more than a job as a stock clerk. His character is saddled with both the most memorable and most self-conscious lines: "I wanna make up my own mind about things. ... Be something!" he exclaims, with heavy foreshadowing, in the opening scene at the bickering family's dinner table.
Surprisingly, Ben Gazzara delivers his lines in uneasy spurts and growling monotones as the grandfather, who listens to Caruso records and tries to channel his utopian-Marxist vision into Ralph. Jonathan Hadary has been directed to play Bessie's second-banana husband as if this were a character from the Jewish sitcoms of the future.
Sher and this design team are responsible for the Lincoln Center Theater's gorgeous-looking production of "The Light in the Piazza." Here, Michael Yeargan's apartment set seems awfully airy for the stifling, overcrowded, Depression context. Catherine Zuber's handsome costumes are perhaps too spiffy, especially for the women. After all, Odets got his title from the prophet Isaiah, "Awake and sing, ye that dwell in dust." The dust on his script remains.
AWAKE AND SING! By Clifford Odets, directed by Bartlett Sher. Lincoln Center Theater at the Belasco Theatre, 111 W. 44th St., Manhattan. Tickets $51.25-$86.25. Call 212-239-6200. Seen at Thursday preview.
-----
Copyright (c) 2006, Newsday, Melville, N.Y.
Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.
For information on republishing this content, contact us at (800) 661-2511 (U.S.), (213) 237-4914 (worldwide), fax (213) 237-6515, or e-mail reprints@krtinfo.com.
