Coming up in Philly theater: Quintessence Theatre Group rediscovers Clifford Odets

Clifford Odets (1906-1963) loomed large on the American theater landscape in the early twentieth century. The Philadelphia-born playwright found success on Broadway as a member of the legendary Group Theatre and was considered one of the preeminent dramatists of his generation. But his reputation has largely been overshadowed by the works of contemporaries like Arthur Miller and Eugene O’Neill.

Quintessence Theatre Group (QTG) hopes to change that with its production of Awake and Sing!, Odets’s 1935 critical and commercial breakthrough, which runs at the Sedgwick Theater in Mt. Airy from January 23 through February 17. Founded as a classical repertory company in 2010, QTG has expanded its focus in recent seasons to great plays in the American canon — a distinction Odets’s searing family drama richly deserves, according to artistic director Alexander Burns.

“When I chose Awake and Sing!, it was to investigate the striking societal parallels between America during the Great Depression and today,” Burns says. “The play focuses on three generations of a Jewish-American family living in the Bronx in 1933, each with a very different perspective on the American dream and its repercussions. Many Americans today are having the same debates about America’s failed promises.”

Burns selected Max Shulman, a classmate from Northwestern University, to direct QTG’s production. A self-described “disciple of Odets,” Shulman holds a PhD in theater history, with a particular focus on Jewish-American theater. He shares Burns’s view that the loving but volatile Berger clan have much in common with families of today.

“Odets talks about people suffering and having to live in petty conditions — economic conditions where you don’t have prospects and you don’t see a future for yourself,” Shulman says. “You feel that even the smallest desires in life are threatened. There will always be people who live like that. We have a growing wealth gap in our country and a growing number of people living in poverty. More and more, people don’t see the potential for themselves to grow or for dreams to happen.”

The disparity between pipe dreams and harsh reality fuels the drama, which draws on socialist, capitalist, and romantic perspectives on the relationship of money to survival. Jacob, the family’s idealistic patriarch, implores his grandson Ralph to “go out and fight, so life shouldn’t be printed on dollar bills.” Bessie Berger, Ralph’s hard-nosed mother, doesn’t mince words in disavowing this worldview: “Without the dollar, you don’t look the world in the eye.” Odets suggests that within the domestic ecosystem, both views might be wrong — and right.

Veteran actor Lawrence Pressman, who plays Jacob, sees the divergent family dynamic as central to the play’s continued resonance. “All the great American plays are about family,” he says. “What appeals to us is to go to the theater and watch how other families operate. It makes us laugh, it makes us cry, it horrifies us. And maybe it causes us to learn something about how we interact with our families.”

Burns agrees: “Like the Tyrones, the Wingfields, the Lomans, the Maxsons, and the Westons, the Bergers are one of the great families of the American theater. Odets is so specific in their depiction that they come to represent every American family.”

Quintessence Theatre Group presents Clifford Odets’s Awake and Sing! from January 23 through February 17, 2019, at the Sedgwick Theater, 7137 Germantown Avenue, Philadelphia. Tickets ($15-50) can be purchased at qtgrep.org or by calling (215) 987-4450. Tickets for the first preview performance on Wednesday, January 23, are pay-what-you-can at the box office.