February 19 1935 – 16 Adar 5695
Awake and Sing! by Clifford Odets had its world premiere, at New York’s Belasco Theater. Odets play was probably the first Broadway production to revolve around a Jewish family – the Bergers – who share a house and a miserable existence during the Depression in the Bronx. The play tells the story of the impoverished Berger family and their conflicts as the parents scheme to manipulate their children’s relationships to their own ends, while the youngsters strive to realize their dreams.
The Bergers definitely constitute a uniquely unhappy family, and they speak the poetic, naive dialect of first-generation, working-class Jews that gave Odets’ plays their music.