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<b>by Clifford Odets, directed by Miles Potter
Soulpepper Theatre Company, Young Centre, Toronto
June 16-July 31, 2009</b><b>
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Soulpepper’s current production of Clifford Odets’ <i>Awake and Sing!</i> (1935) would do well to follow the exhortation of its title. The play is now recognized as one of the great American family dramas, but under Miles Potter’s direction none of the multiple tensions the play explores light up the stage.
Three generations of the Jewish-American Berger family live in a Bronx apartment during the Great Depression. Because of the economy Ralph (Jonathan Gould) and his sister Hennie (Sarah Wilson), both in their twenties still live at home. Both wish to escape but their lives are controlled by Bessie (Nancy Palk), the matriarch of the family. Bessie’s immigrant father Jacob (William Webster) supports the children against their mother, but she considers him in “his second childhood) and discounts his views. The lodger Moe (Ari Cohen), in love with Hennie, also attacks Bessie’s hypocrisy, but to Bessie his opinions mean nothing since he’s not part of the family. The struggles are both personal and symbolic. Jacob is a Marxist idealist who believes fundamental change is needed to better mankind. Bessie is a bourgeois pragmatist who believes that respectability, supported by money, outweighs all other values including truthfulness. Ralph and Hennie are caught up in the war between these two forces.
The play is written so that the tension, occasionally broken by humour, accumulates until we reach a breaking point solved only by the siblings’ daring choices at the very end. The primary reason the production is so lacklustre is that Potter allows Palk to play Bessie as a caricature of a Jewish mother, a comic figure, rather than the near-villainous arch-nemesis of her own children’s happiness as Odets makes her. It is a rich role but Palk doesn’t begin to explore Bessie’s power or the fear that motivates her. Moe is also a key figure, a symbol of the abyss of cynicism both children need to avoid. Cohen conveys Moe’s obnoxiousness so strongly it hard to understand why the family allows him in their home. What Cohen and Potter miss is the bitterness of hopeless love that prompts his outer show of toughness. Fortunately, all the other roles are generally well taken. Wilson is too strident, but Gould spiritually grows throughout the action so at the end we can believe he has been reborn. Webster is especially good at capturing both the strength and fantasy that make up the old man’s idealism. Michael Hanrahan is excellent as Bessie’s brash, success-obsessed brother, a fine contrast with Derek Boyes as Bessie’s childishly ineffectual husband. It is good to see Soulpepper take up the banner for Clifford Odets. It’s just too bad it doesn’t brandish it with more conviction.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: A version of this review appeared in <i>Eye Weekly</i> 2009-06-19.
Photo: William Webster, Nancy Palk, Derek Boyes, Jonathan Gould and Sarah Wilson.
©Cylla von Tiedemann.
<b>2009-06-19</b>
<b>Awake and Sing!</b>