Theatre Review: Awake and Sing!

This is my first experience with a Clifford Odet's play (I've neither read nor seen one his plays before. Shocking, I know). I really enjoyed it, although it was longer than expected. The play is about a Jewish family living in the Bronx in the 1930's. They're barely getting by, and tensions are high. Bessie (Zoe Wanamaker), the mother, is highly controlling, and refuses to let her son, Ralph (Pablo Schreiber) date both because she doesn't like the girl he chooses and because she scared of having to do with the paycheck he brings home every week. Hennie (Lauren Ambrose from Six Feet Under), Ralph's sister, is a little wild, and soon gets herself in the family way, another crises for Bessie to deal with. Meanwhile Jacob (Ben Gazzara), Bessie's father, who lives with them regularly lectures them on the evils of capitalism and the beauty of Marxism, and Myron (Jonathan Hadary), Bessie's husband, does very little at all. To further complicate things, they have a border, Moe Axelrod (Mark Ruffalo) who lost his leg in WWI and lives off his disability, and who is in love with Hennie, although they bicker constantly.
This play is a lot more about the character than the plot, but it still moves along fine. My only complaint was the two intermissions (I don't even like to have one!) between the four acts. I always want things to just keep moving. This play is dated in that there some racial slurs made that are no longer acceptable, and there were some audible gasps when these lines were spoken. I was a little shocked, not by the play, but that the audience seemed so hard hit. It's a play that was written in 1935! Give me a break. Anyway, some of them left at the intermission following, which I thought was too bad. I found the Ralph character annoying which is a shame since he's supposed to be our hope for the future, but other than that, I thought the play was quite beautiful, and this production really great. The set was lovely, and while I didn't fully understand the significance, it was cool to see them deconstruct it as the play went on (every act the set was less realistic, more just ideas). The walls of the set actually flew out during the third act, leaving only doorways for the fourth. I will also say that it was a pleasure, as usual, to watch our friend, Mark Ruffalo, in action.