The Bergers, Myron (Juan Carlos Diaz, left) and Bessie (Debra Walton, right), console Sam (Sina Pooresmaeil), whom they’ve coerced their daughter into marrying, in Clifford Odets’s Awake and Sing!
Sea Dog Theater’s 90th-anniversary production of Clifford Odets’s Awake and Sing! features a multiracial cast that makes the Depression-era drama feel contemporary and highlights the universality of the play’s themes. Set in the 1930s, the play focuses on the Bergers, a Jewish family who live in one room in an apartment in the Bronx, and the impact of economic hardship, unfulfilled dreams, and the tension between idealism and survival.
Bessie contemplates the hardships her family experiences while Jacob (Gary Sloan), her father, floats around the house espousing the virtues of Communism and listening to opera.
Siblings Hennie (Daisy Wong) and Ralph Berger (Trevor McGhie) have dreams, and they want out. But they face the heavy hand of their mother, Bessie Berger (Debra Walton). She has a good reason for her control: in Depression-era America survival is difficult.
Bessie is always angry; she has made sacrifices for her family, including giving up her dreams to support her very nice but spineless husband Myron Berger (Juan Carlos Diaz, who plays the character with equal parts ebullience and passivity). Not only is she working hard to keep the lights on but her grown children’s romantic relationships are bringing shame to her (and the family). Ralph loves a woman who was orphaned as a child and doesn’t have any money, and Hennie got pregnant by a man who has skipped town.
Morty (Alfred C. Kemp), Bessie’s brother, has become wealthy working in the garment industry. He offers to give Hennie new dresses from the winter line and helps Bessie manage the books for the family. Even though Hennie and Ralph dream of success, uncle Morty’s success seems unattainable, and he’s less of a role model for them and more of a reminder of their poverty.
Sam, a newly arrived immigrant who has been unwittingly folded into the Berger family, feels unloved.
It would be easy to dislike Bessie as a character, but Odets positions her in the family much like her male counterpoints in 20th-century drama. She’s the main breadwinner and gets little reward, much less thanks. But without her family, who would she be? There’s a sense that, despite her constant complaints, her family is everything to her and gives her purpose.
Also living in these tight quarters are Moe Axelrod (Christopher J. Domig), a gruff and cynical family friend who is renting a room from the Bergers. Moe lost his leg fighting in World War I and acridly spits out the word democracy like it’s a dirty, disillusioning idea. In another room is Hennie’s father, Jacob (Gary Sloan) who spouts Communist propaganda and loves opera. Sam (Sina Pooresmaeil) is a poor dupe: an immigrant whose lack of English Hennie scorns when she’s forced to marry him because the father of her child is nowhere to be found.
Under Erwin Maas’s exceptional direction, the performance which could get melodramatic and stagey, is well balanced, and the actors fluent in the language of Odets’s play, which is filled with the colloquialisms, idioms, and Yiddish phrases of the early 20th century.
The atrium-like performance space in St. George’s Church creates some physical challenges in maintaining the “one room” concept in which the play takes place, but Guy De Lancey’s production design has added elements of multimedia that foster a sense of intimacy. TV consoles stand in the four corners of the room and capture actors in livestream as they go off stage either to the corridor behind the performance space, or on the periphery of the stage, making it seem as if actors remain in the space. Fan Zhang’s sound design also elevates the singularity of the space by amplifying sounds from dinner and other activities that take place off stage but would also be present on stage otherwise.
Hennie (Daisy Wong) is confronted by Moe (Christopher J. Domig) who’s desperate to show his love for her. Photographs by Jeremy Varner.
Relationships in the play are mostly in a stalemate, but a special bond between Ralph and his grandfather Jacob shines through. Jacob champions Ralph’s desire for freedom and tells him: “This is why I tell you—DO! Do what is in your heart and you carry in yourself a revolution.”
Surprisingly, Odets’s play has an uplifting message which comes through in the characters of Myron, the dreamer, and Jacob, the idealist. They remind us that there’s more to life than money; we also need to fill our lives with poetry, hope, love, and music to keep going.
Clifford Odets’s Awake and Sing! plays through Nov. 8 at the Sea Dog Theater (209 E.16th St.). Evening performances are at 7:30 p.m. on Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday with a special added performance at 7:30 p.m. on Monday, Oct. 20. For tickets and more information, visit seadogtheater.org.
Playwright: Clifford Odets
Director: Erwin Maas
Production Design: Guy de Lancey
Sound Design: Fan Zhang
Costume Design: Hanxiao Zhang
