Awake and Sing!
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Review of Awake & Sing! - Tip of the Week

reviewed by Nina Metz
New City
10/16/02

In just a few short years, Timeline Theatre Company has established itself as one of the classiest and most consistently talented ensembles on the off-Loop theater scene. They begin their 2002-2003 season with an engaging production of Clifford Odets' 1935 drama of cramped family life, "Awake and Sing!" Incredibly political, the play itself is never strident, and director Louis Contey understands this well; his staging reflects a sensitive attention to the details of each character's personal hell. The story centers on a Jewish family stuffed into a Bronx tenement (designed by Noelle C.K. Hathaway) that is the epitome of dilapidated dignity—you can practically smell the mothballs. Each member of this family—the overbearing mother (a role originated by Stella Adler), the passive father, the disillusioned son and daughter, the resigned grandfather—feels trapped. There's simply not enough room, literally and metaphorically, to think or breathe. And yet Odets somehow instills a sense of hope; the blackness of these lives is not without light. To single out any one member of this rock-solid cast would detract from their excellent work as an ensemble. This is truly a complex family, and the cast wisely avoids a cutesy Neil Simon-ish depiction of Depression-era Jewish life.