by Eugene Paul

Actor Clifford Odets was in his twenties when Harold Clurman asked the young member of their Group Theatre to try writing a play for the Group. The result was the ground breaking Awake and Sing! which tore through the American theatrical scene  putting central on the stage a family of desperate Jewish immigrants living in a Bronx tenement  during the depth of the Depression, struggling to keep their heads above water. Now become a heralded, influential American classic,  the play was the kick-off production of the celebratory twenty-fifth season of NAATCO, the National Asian American Theatre Company. It is being revived by the Public Theater in a new production directed by Stephen Brown-Fried, with us, the audience, evenly divided on either side of the stage.

The play’s been claimed by upward striving. China and crystal inhabit the dining room sideboard, Chippendale copies of chairs sit around the Queen Anne-ish  dining room table. The old davenport that Ralph has to sleep on is, however, present in all its saggy glory. Set designer Anshuman Bhatia has no answer as to why Ralph has to use it as his bed because the setting is enviably spacious, that way to the kitchen, over there to Grandfather Jacob’s room, back there to the other rooms, for Moe, the boarder, sister Hennie, mother Bessie and father Myron, and the front door.  They are no longer cramped. The pressure cooker is gone. Nor are they shabby.  Costume designer Alexae Visel has seen to that, top to toe.

Fortunately, Odets wrote in a passion that burns still and the NAATCO cast have their own passions galore to burn. The combination  flares throughout the play. Young Ralph (fine Jon Norman Schneider), itching to get away on his own, has met a girl.  This is calamitous to Bessie (splendid Mia Katigbak), his mother, who needs every penny of his meager salary to keep the household going.  True, there’s the boarder, war damaged Moe (excellent Sanjit De Silva) who has an outspoken yen for beautiful daughter Hennie ( surprising Teresa Avia Lim) but that’s not enough for Bessie. She’s worked too hard to get them here, keeping things nice, keeping things together.  Her husband, Myron (wonderful Henry Yuk) a completely translatable Asian schlemiel, doesn’t bring in a dime. Even grandfather Jacob (astonishing Alok Tewari), retired barber, keeps barbering for the little he earns occasionally giving haircuts. Successful Morty (overly suave James Saito), his son, Bessie’s brother, always comes around to  get his hair trimmed by his father.

The apple of Jacob’s eye is his grandson, Ralph, the reincarnation of his youthful dreams, to get out, to be free, to fly, not to be dragged down by the demands of the dollars Bessie always needs. But – later. Things have come to a boil again. Hennie is pregnant.  Moe is seething. Disgrace and poverty are at the door. The rough music of Odets’s words still cries out through the simplistic machinations of the young playwright. Life has to be handled. Life has to be solved. And we have become involved in the life of the Berger family, Bessie, the hard survivor at their center. It becomes too much for Jacob.  He has his own solutions. They are not his daughter’s.

Director Brown-Fried absorbs the challenge head on of translating this quintessentially Jewish period play – it’s already history, just look at the gentrification of the Lower East Side and the rapidly smoothing Bronx – into its basic universality: the world wide struggle of the under classes for a better life. Here, his opportunity to underline the inevitability of change coincides with the desires of the NAATCO actors to demonstrate their oneness as part of the theatrical world, a long time project of the Public Theater.  Yes, grandfather Jacob is  definitely part of  Jewish past but Odets’s words have taken on new colorations with the rest of his family, a mirror held up to life as it goes on around us. The play just gets better and better as we accept them as they are. It’s uplifting to see that  young Ralph in Jon Norman Schneider’s brilliant finish relates his young, new life to his grandfather’s, awakes, and in spirit, sings.

Awake and Sing! At the Public Theater, 425 Lafayette Street.  Tickets: $45. 212-967-7555. 2:30 min. Thru Aug 8.