Jewish Life in Bronx Subject of Play Coming to Belasco

“Awake and Sing!”— the new Group Theatre production opening Tuesday at the Belasco Theatre—should be of particular interest to Jewish audiences, for in subject matter and treatment it inaugurates a new type of American play—a folk play laid, not in the Kentucky mountains or the Southern cotton fields, but in the home of a Jewish family in the Bronx. Its author is a young Jew, Clifford Odets, who was born in the Bronx and has been a member of the Group Theatre from its inception.

In the living room of the Berger family, in a crowded Bronx apartment, three generations and half a dozen conflicting temperaments engender a drama. The grandfather, old Jacob, is sufficiently removed in years and temperament from the daily struggle of making ends meet to dream only of a new and better order of things, and to hope that his grandchildren may have the courage and vision to aid in bringing it about.

Bessie, his daughter, also dreams of a new life, but she envisages escape from the miserable penury of their existence through profitable marriages for her two children, who will bring wealth and prosperity to the family. Ralph and Hennie, the two children, are caught between their mother’s domination on the one hand and the pressure of joblessness, small pay envelopes and the dreariness of their prospects on the other.

Uncle Morty, the cloak and suit merchant who lays in a winter line and then waits vainly for winter; Moe Axelrod, who bets with invariable success on the right horse; and the aimless father, Myron, complete a rich and varied gallery of characters.

The almost all-Jewish cast of “Awake and Sing!” is a familiar one to New York audiences. Stella and Luther Adler, Morris Carnovsky, J. E. Bromberg and Phoebe Brand play the principal parts.

The play has been directed by Harold Clurman and the settings designed by Boris Aaronson.