Full Cast Set For Clifford Odets’ AWAKE AND SING! on Broadway

Manhattan Theatre Club has announced complete casting for the company’s new Broadway production of Clifford Odets’ landmark 1935 American drama, Awake and Sing! Directed by Tyne Rafaeli (Off-Broadway: Data, The Coast Starlight, Epiphany), Awake and Sing! will begin preview performances on Tuesday, December 15, 2026, with opening night on Thursday, January 7, 2027, at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre (261 West 47th Street).

Newly added to the company are Tony Award winner Michael Aronov (Broadway: Oslo, Golden Boy; Television: “The Americans,” “The Blacklist”) as Moe Axelrod; Benjamin Pelteson (Theatre: Galilee, 34 world premiere) as Sam Feinschreiber; Emmy Award winner Richard Schiff (Television: “The West Wing,” “The Good Doctor”; Broadway: Glengarry Glen Ross) as Jacob Berger; and Stephen Schnetzer (Broadway: Prayer for the French Republic and Wit at MTC, The Waverly Gallery, Oslo) as Schlosser. They join the previously announced Tony Award winner Danny Burstein (Broadway: Moulin Rouge!, Marjorie Prime, Fiddler on the Roof) as Uncle Morty; Tony and Grammy Award nominee Micaela Diamond (Broadway: Parade, The Cher Show) as Hennie Berger; Tony and Emmy Award nominee Jessica Hecht (Broadway: Eureka Day and Summer, 1976 at MTC) as Bessie Berger; Will Pullen (Broadway: To Kill a Mockingbird, Sweat) as Ralph Berger; and Tony Award nominee Jeremy Shamos (Broadway: Clybourne Park, The Assembled Parties at MTC; Television: “Only Murders in the Building,” “The Gilded Age”) as Myron Berger. Rehearsals begin today in New York City.

Director Tyne Rafaeli commented, “I am thrilled with the incredibly talented company of actors we have assembled for this production of Awake and Sing!, which was written in 1934, but asks questions about how to live with dignity in America that feel so prophetic of our era. We see a multi-generational, Jewish immigrant family, trapped in their tiny Bronx tenement, amidst the poverty and shattered promises of the Great Depression. They speak with a thrilling mixture of street-smart Bronx slang and idealistic visions of a new world just out of reach—all shot through with Yiddish wisdom and Old Testament timeless power. Odets asks if, despite everything, we can bring ourselves to believe in a country where people don’t have to choose between survival and dignity.

When the show premiered on Broadway, it marked the first time that Jewish Americans were portrayed as real human beings—complex, flawed, loving, contradictory, hopeful, foolish, lustful, hypocritical. With the brilliantly talented company of actors we have assembled for the play’s first entirely Jewish cast on Broadway in nearly 100 years, we hope to capture the same intimacy as The Group Theatre’s company did in the play’s premiere. Of course every member of our cast has a different relationship to their American and Jewish identity, but there is a shared cultural foundation which will inform the specificity of Odets’ story.

At a time when questions of belonging, assimilation, and antisemitism have acquired renewed urgency, returning to the particular world from which this play emerged feels especially meaningful and I hope its specificity will illuminate universal questions about what it means to fight for a life of dignity.”

Awake and Sing! is produced with Tony and Olivier Award winners Brian and Dayna Lee (Broadway: Here There Are Blueberries, Giant, Moulin Rouge!, Angels in America), and Tony and Olivier Award winners Nicole and Stephanie Kramer (Broadway: Giant, Sunset Boulevard, Leopoldstadt).

It’s the 1930s, and the Bronx is a furnace. New ideas clash with the old amidst the poverty and shattered promises of the Great Depression. And three generations of the Berger family, trapped inside their cramped tenement, struggle to hold different visions of an American dream and the Jewish experience. Directed by Tyne Rafaeli, this classic battle between hope and disillusionment returns to Broadway, speaking thrillingly to the present.

Awake and Sing! originally premiered on Broadway in 1935, produced by the legendary Group Theatre, and helped establish Clifford Odets as a major voice in American theatre.