The expansive grandfather Jacob (Ben Gazzara, left) speaks of Hebrew prophecy, Marxist socialism and Caruso recordings in the Depression-era Berger apartment where the colorful Moe Axelrod (Mark Ruffalo) talks tough. |
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NEW YORK – Midway through director Bartlett Sher's robustly lyrical staging of “Awake and Sing!,” the claustrophobic Bronx apartment that houses the Berger family begins fading away. Walls slide out, the roof-line dissolves, and eight contentious characters are freed to face the terrible stresses of their Depression-era existence and to drift apart.
That grand gesture in Michael Yeargan's set carries symbolic import for the Bergers, but it also nudges audiences into a new way of listening to this play's jangly, urban language and its big range of themes.
Narcissistic world
Sher, now back at Seattle's Intiman Theatre where he is artistic director and in rehearsals for “Richard III,” sees the narrowing of scope and theme as a problem: “It's the same problem in theater that's happened to everybody in the country. In a world where we're not giving any permission to think larger thoughts, not encouraged by teachers or television to get out of our own individual narcissistic worlds, how can young playwrights be expected to write about anything larger?”
Social drama, of the sort Odets and Arthur Miller both pioneered in the U.S., has long been considered minor by academic theater historians. Or, if not minor, at least secondary to the existential plays or innovative ones that flowed from Beckett and the Theatre of Absurd into the work of, say, Edward Albee or more recently, Will Eno.
Innovative contemporary Americans such as Mac Wellman and Erik Ehn, experimenting with language and form as visual artists do, may be critically praised, but they are less often produced; they are accessible to mostly small, coterie audiences.
Critical and academic taste alone doesn't explain why so many young Americans writing for the theater have narrowed their scope and with it, their audience, while English and Irish plays have engaged the masses this year.
Brit Bennett's deftly provocative exploration of education, class and the uses of history in “The History Boys” proved madly entertaining and completely relevant to the American era of No Child Left Behind. Not to mention that its rollicking cast, together off and on for two years, performs this rangy, non-naturalistic piece with sparkling spontaneity and skill.
Englishman David Hare's compelling look at the Bush-Blair machinations over the Iraq War in “Stuff Happens” at the Public Theatre remains frighteningly current, while the Anglo-Irish Martin McDonagh is striking sparks of recognition again with his gruesomely entertaining black comedy about terrorism, “The Lieutenant of Inishmore,” on Broadway. Comic or dramatic, such plays connect individual characters, as Odets did, to their larger roles in a community, in civil society.
DATEBOOK
The 60th annual Tony Awards 8 to 11 tonight; CBS (KFMB/Channel 8)
