THEATER - "Awake and Sing!"

Oh, Clifford Odets’ piece on an extended family in the 1930s has not aged well. The romantic, Ralph (Pablo Schreiber) has been exposed as hopeless, the grandfather’s suicide has become meaningless, and all the bits in between seem melodramatic and sensationalized. The script is well intentioned, but all the compression leaves it filled with holes and its dreams of a better tomorrow are just that—dreams. That everything seems so shallow is the fault of the director, Bartlett Sher, whose idea of architectural beauty and openness doesn’t work nearly as well here as it did in his last production for Lincoln Center Theater, The Light in the Piazza.

Piazza was a romantic fantasy, set in a foreign land of possibilities, where anything might happen. Odets’ only fantasy is that America might become a better place, less obsessed with capitalism and more consumed with the soul. It seems a bit hollow and theatrical when Sher has the set itself gradually dissolve (the walls of the adjoining rooms raise in the second act, the windows fade before the third, and the doorways sink through the floor right before what’s supposed to be Ralph’s triumphant and uplifting final speech). Are we supposed to believe that possibilities are opening up to this family or that they are free of the superficial and material?

That’s a pretty optimistic reading of Odets’ work, and it clashes with all the misery left behind onstage in the final act. The script itself glosses over a lot: Hennie’s decision to leave her husband with a child that isn’t his¬—even if it is for the love of her life¬—comes across as brutal and callous, not as an act of at-long-last freedom. And there’s something about Schreiber’s voice and mannerisms (he’s acted pretty much the same way in the last two shows I saw him in, Manuscript and Mr. Marmalade) that makes me doubt his sincerity and his so-called happiness.

I personally don't understand what makes Awake and Sing worthy of revival; it reminds me a lot of Raisin in the Sun (in that there's a dominating mother, a dreaming man, and a rebellious daughter, though in all fairness, those are archetypal characters). Granted, I prefer modern plays that allow actions to speak louder than words, or older classics that don't shroud those words in everyday prose (not that realism is bad). Awake and Sing! gets stuck in the middle somewhere, sluggish and safe, and for a character piece, we don't learn nearly enough about the characters to care (not even about their dreams).

The notes ring false (even if the accents sound nice), the environment belies the mood, and the dramatic tension is off-kilter and in need of a less meandering pace. Odets had a message when he wrote Awake and Sing!, but in revival, it lacks reason and focus and only allows the ensemble cast to show their period chops (which they do, and how). And that, sir and madam, is nothing to awake and sing about.