Chicago Tribune
- Highly Recommended
"...This was never a subtle play. And the narrative events therein — from pregnancy to betrayal to suicide to sudden self-actualization — happen with so little normalcy inbetween, the piece always plays best when the stakes are high enough that one crisis merely seems to will the next one into being."
Chicago Sun Times
- Highly Recommended
"...As for love, you find it here only in the affection between grandfather and grandson. As for redemption, none is accorded to Bessie, whose self-justifying speech is too little, too late. And as for the play's political and social arguments? Just look around at our own "paradise lost" and our hunger for optimism. "Awake and Sing!" is for now."
Chicago Reader
- Highly Recommended
"...Amy Morton's gripping production for Northlight Theatre conveys the script's energy by adopting a combative spirit and the momentum of a speeding freight train. In group scenes the cast deliver their lines in quick, sometimes overlapping succession, creating a dizzying torrent of words and the exciting possibility of chaos. Maybe it was all the time she spent as one of the warring Westons in Tracy Letts's August: Osage County, but as a director Morton proves particularly adept at orchestrating a family argument—its crescendoes, repeated motifs, and arias of accusation and self-pity."
Windy City Times
- Highly Recommended
"...With all these competing voices, Morton's chief job is coordinator. The pacing of the play is lightning-quick. The first couple of acts are especially demanding of the audience to keep up with the frenetic dialogue. But this top-notch ensemble keeps the conflict flowing effectively so that when we arrive at the sole dramatic event of the play, it wields a silencing impact."
Copley News Service
- Highly Recommended
"...Director Amy Morton takes a hard look at the extended Berger family. The Bergers are New York Jews and they speak in the rhythms and argot of generations of Jews portrayed on the stage, on radio, and in the movies. But Morton doesn’t permit the stereotyped kvetching that could make such characters either endearing or sentimental. The bitterness among the Berger clan is palpable, not comical. The play has been compared to the drama of Anton Chekhov, and legitimately so in rendering three-dimensional men and women trapped in an unfulfilling existence."
Time Out Chicago
- Highly Recommended
"...Awake and Sing! was written for Odets’s Group Theatre ensemble but could just as easily have been meant for Morton’s. The director and her ideal cast capture the claustrophobia of the Berger household (well served by John Musial’s cramped period set) while imbuing Odets’s lightly sketched characters with deepening color. They’re also expert at mining the humor layered in with the dour; this production makes a strong case that Odets’s influences included both Marx and Chekhov in equal measures."
ChicagoCritic
- Highly Recommended
"...Odets gave a voice to the dispossessed in the 1930’s and Morton’s remount of Awake and Sing demonstrates the shot of perseverance the Bessie, Ralph and Moe each possess. The honesty of this cast gives a humanity to Odets characters. I especially admired the intense work from Cindy Gold, Jay Whittaker, Mike Nussbaum and Keith Gallagher as the Bergers. They did justice to Clifford Odets’ marvelous script."
Chicago Stage and Screen
- Highly Recommended
"...The struggle for survival for the American Family during a down economy is something that almost every person in America is forced to think about during this period of our existence. This is probably what makes the current Northlight Theatre production of "Awake and Sing!", Clifford Odets' Tony winning play dealing with the Depression of 1935 more meaningful today than it might have been, even during its Broadway revival in 2006. While the time period of the play is 1935, our America today is experiencing a lot of what took place during the Great Depression. Families have had to move in with each other to make ends meet. Friends and neighbors are losing their homes, through eviction of foreclosure."
Chicago Theater Beat
- Highly Recommended
"...Director Amy Morton ably brings out the realistic depth of these characters, in all their clannish divisiveness, and effectively highlights Odets’ rich and street-smart language. There’s plenty to mull on in this intense production. Yet for all that Artistic Director B.J. Jones writes in the program of the 1930s economic crisis in which this play was born and the current one that inspired him to mount it, Morton’s vision focuses less on the stress and politics of the world events outside the Bergers’ apartment than on the overwrought family dynamics within it."
