Full Casting Announced for London's Awake and Sing!

Full casting has been announced for Almeida Theatre Artistic Director Michael Attenborough's production of Clifford Odets' Awake and Sing!, which will run at the Almeida from August 31 – October 20, with press night on September 6.  Designs are by Tim Shortall with lighting by Paul Pyant and sound by John Leonard.

"Starkly dramatic and vividly comic, Awake and Sing! tells the story of the Bergers, a lower-middle-class, three-generation Jewish family living in a Bronx apartment during the1930s.  The family, ruled over by strong-willed matriarch Bessie, long for a better world for themselves. True to life in his depiction of the extreme economic hardships confronted by working-class immigrant families during the 1930s, Odets documents their travails and their hopes, capturing the frenetic, pressured existence in this crowded home," state press notes.

Joining the previously announced Stockard Channing as Bessie Berger, are Trevor Cooper (The Late Henry Moss at the Almeida) as Uncle Morty, Kieron Jecchinis ("Cromwell") as Schlosser, Paul Jesson (The Seagull, Troilus and Cressida) as Myron Berger, Nigel Lindsay (Romance, The Earty Paradise at the Almeida) as Moe Axelrod, John Lloyd Fillingham (The Caucasian Chalk Circle at the National) as Sam Feinschreiber, John Rogan (Macbeth, The Iceman Cometh at the Almeida) as Jacob, Ben Turner (A Midsummer Night's Dream) as Ralph Berger and Jodie Whittaker (Enemies; film: Venus) as Hennie Berger. 

Channing's London theatre credits include The Exonerated at Riverside Studios and Six Degrees of Separation for the Royal Court, which later transferred to the Comedy Theatre.  Her New York theatre work includes Hapgood, Six Degrees of Separation and House of Blue Leaves all for the Lincoln Centre, Love Letters at the Promenade Theater, Women in Mind for Manhattan Theatre Club and Joe Egg for the Longacre Theatre, for which she won a Tony Award.  On television she is best know for her role as First Lady Abbey Bartlett in the hugely popular US drama series, "The West Wing." Her film credits include Six Degrees of Separation for which she was nominated for an Oscar, Up Close and Personal, Moll Flanders, Bright Young Things, Business of Strangers and Grease, in which she played Rizzo.

As Artistic Director of The Almeida Theatre Company Michael Attenborough's productions have been The Mercy Seat, Five Gold Rings, Brighton Rock, The Late Henry Moss and Enemies, as well as, most recently, his critically acclaimed productions of Frank McGuinness' There Came A Gypsy Riding and Theodore Ward's Big White Fog.  On leaving the Royal Shakespeare Company, where he was Principal Associate Director, he was invited to become an Honorary Associate Artist.  In 2005 Michael Attenborough directed the world premiere of David Edgar's Playing with Fire at The National Theatre.

Celebrated American playwright Clifford Odets (1906-1963) was born in Philadelphia of Jewish immigrant parents and was raised in the Bronx, New York.  He began his career as an actor in 1931 but shortly turned to writing and his first play Waiting for Lefty immediately launched him as one of America's leading playwrights of the 1930s.  Among Odets' other plays are Paradise Lost, Golden Boy, Rocket Man to the Moon, Clash by Night and The Big Knife.  His screenplay credits include The General Died at Dawn, The Sweet Smell of Success and Story on Page One.  

Awake and Sing! was first staged by the celebrated Group Theatre, originally opening in 1935 at the Belasco Theatre in New York and has since been revived four times on Broadway.  The Group Theatre was the New York City Theatre Collective formed by Harold Clurman, Cheryl Crawford and Lee Strasberg in 1931, which in the ten years of its existence, produced works by many important American Playwrights, most notably Odets.  The recent Lincoln Center production of Awake and Sing!, nominated for eight Tony Awards last year, winning the 2006 Tony for Best Revival of a Play, opened at the Belasco Theatre in March last year.

Photo of Stockard Channing by Linda Lenzi

 

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