Theatreguide.London
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The Theatreguide.London Review
In March 2020 the covid-19 epidemic
forced the closure of all British theatres. Some companies adapted
by putting archive recordings of past productions online, others
by streaming new shows, and various online archives preserve still
more vintage productions. Even as things return to normal we
continue to review the experience of watching live theatre
onscreen.
Awake
And Sing!
US
Public Broadcasting 1972 and Marquee.tv Spring 2023
Clifford Odets's 1935 play is an important milestone in the history of American drama and an engrossing human drama in itself. And this 1972 US television production captures enough of its power to hold you.
To get the historical bit out of the way, in this and a few others of his plays Odets discovered something that would affect other playwrights for a century: that the best way to dramatise big social and political subjects was not through epic but through domestic drama, showing how the big things affected the daily lives of ordinary people.
Watching Awake And Sing! you can sense Arthur Miller, Lillian Hellman, David Rabe, August Wilson and dozens of other American dramatists sitting next to you taking notes.
In this case the big subject is the Great Depression and the fact that in 1935 it seemed apocalyptic. Maybe – just maybe – it signalled the failures and final collapse of the American Dream and of capitalism.
Awake And Sing! shows us a very ordinary working-class New York Jewish family. Father is a nonentity who yearns for a hero like Teddy Roosevelt and dreams of winning newspaper contests. Mother is so dedicated to keeping the family together that she will sacrifice the happiness of individual members.
Son yearns to get out to discover and begin his own life while daughter just wants some of the simple pleasures promised to a young woman.
Grandfather is an old-line socialist who preaches Marx out of books he hasn't actually read, and their boarder is an embittered Great War veteran determined to exploit the system through capitalism at its rawest, as a small-time gangster.
Odets takes his time introducing these characters, and you may find the first act of the play slow going. But it is necessary for us to believe in them, because we are going to begin to realise that all, in their own ways, are trying to fit into the world they grew up in. But what if that world really is dying?
It is because Odets makes us care about them as people that their frustrations and bewilderment become more real than any statistics or epic treatment of the Depression could.
The characters rarely talk about the big issues directly, but it is another of Odets's strengths that when they do – when, for example, grandfather urges grandson to find new ways of thinking – 'Do! Do what is in your heart and carry in yourself a revolution!' - we actually believe these people would express themselves this way.
Remarkably, while some of the local colour dialogue may seem strained nine decades later – the wannabe gangster's tough-guy slang is particularly dated – it is when they talk politics and economics that they sound most natural.
Spoiler alert: at the end of the play one character is going to commit to a life of political action, fighting to change the dying system, and another is going to abandon all responsibilities in search of purely hedonistic pleasure.
Take note that the play will not make a moral judgement between them. 'Make a break or spend the rest of your life in a coffin.'
This production for America's one noncommercial network is cast with solid, if not star-level actors. You'll recognise a young Walter Matthau as the veteran and perhaps Felicia Farr as the daughter and Milton Selzer as the father.
Matthau is hampered by the dated tough-guy lingo he has to speak, but shows us the pained and even sensitive man beneath the swagger, and Lee Fuchs as grandfather and Robert Lipton as the son make what could have been cardboard symbols into real and sympathetic humans.
You don't have to be interested in theatre history to find Awake And Sing! an emotion- and thought-provoking drama.
Gerald
Berkowitz
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