Awake and Sling

Awake and Sling: Awake in a World That Encourages Sleep — Theatre Review

Playwright and co-star Raymond J. Barry’s Awake in a World That Encourages Sleep is being advertised with the tagline: “Occupy this play!” However, although this one act, three actor production takes place entirely in a park (not Zuccotti or the lawn at L.A.’s City Hall), Awake has little to do with Occupy Wall Street’s occupations per se, although it does reflect that mass movement’s anti-corporate sensibility.

Combining the Theatre of the Absurd with agitprop, Barry’s drama is a cross between Samuel Beckett’s Waiting For Godot and Clifford Odets’ Waiting For Lefty. (Odets, of course, also penned Awake and Sing! another proletarian theatre classic that was originally presented by the fabled Group Theatre in1935 and was revived on Broadway in 2006 with Ben Gazzara.) Barry plays Edward, an economist similar to John Perkins, the whistlebowing consultant who wrote the expose Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, exposing imperialist intervention in the Third World through financial and covert means.

Edward was strolling in the park one day, in the merry, merry month of whenever, when he is taken by surprise by stumbling upon Erica (Tacey Adams). She has apparently called in “well” and is taking the day off from work so she can read a volume of Leo Tolstoy’s short stories on a bench in a public park on a sunny afternoon. Or is their rendezvous actually part of a premeditated scheme, rather than merely a random act? As it turns out Erica also happens to be the wife of Paul (Joseph Culp), a [PLOT SPOILER ALERT] former business associate of Edward’s. Edward has woken up and abandoned the corporate/government cabal referred to as the “Group” (I trust this is not a reference to the Group Theatre). He woos Erica and clashes with Paul over corporate ethics (now there’s an oxymoron for you!) and Erica’s affections.

Barry’s dialogue is crisply written and expertly delivered, often rapid fire, by the trio of thesps with an absurdist tilt and lilt. As the naysayer, Edward in particular slings zingers about the business world he has become disaffected with and alienated from. He’s now an insomniac in a world of somnambulists. The nature of what may be Paul’s hidden relationship with his former colleague threatens to unhinge Paul, who is still very much a corporate shill and tool with a revealing back story. Meanwhile, the action in the park is intermittently interrupted by offstage explosions, due to an ongoing war not too far away as part of the realpolitik of the ruling powers-that-be.

Those bombs bursting in air may be heard by the actors onstage, but not by members of the audience, and I couldn’t help but think that it would have been more effective if the explosions had indeed been rendered audible for the aud. But this is a mere quibble, as the drama is excellently acted throughout and presents a cogent, if Kafka-esque, critique of corporate rule. All three actors are clad in business attire, and the bare stage is painted white, including a tree that is flanked by ivory benches. As a playwright and performer Barry proudly wears his roots as a Living Theater actor in 1963’s The Brig and as a veteran of Joseph Papp’s Public Theater and the Open Theater upon his sleeve.

Joseph Culp is great as the increasingly desperate, bewildered husband and corporate hit man. Culp rather appropriately played Dr. Doom in The Fantastic Four. It’s uncanny watching him; for a few seconds, in profile and with his tall, lanky frame, one catches glimpses of his late father, Robert Culp, a childhood favorite. In 1965 my family used to gather around the tube to watch I Spy, which somehow seemed liberal because it paired Culp’s globetrotting pro-tennis player-cum-intelligence agent with Bill Cosby as his trainer-cum-secret agent in one of primetime television’s first integrated network series. The white/Black team seemed as exotic then as the far flung exotic locales where much of the show was shot on location. Of course, in retrospect, there was nothing at all “progressive” about I Spy, wherein Culp’s Kelly was generally top dog over Cosby’s Scotty, and the duo did the bidding of the U.S. power elite, roaming the world as covert hit men, overthrowing Third World regimes and the like in order to make the world safe for imperialism. In this sense, Joseph is not only the son of Robert, but Awake’s Paul is arguably the child of I Spy’s Kelly.

Nevertheless, Culp can be exculpated from his character’s sins, and he remained a personal favorite. Now dear reader, as if providing you with this stellar review isn’t enough, here’s my very own personal Robert Culp story: In late 2009 or early 2010 I finally saw Paul Mazursky’s 1969 wife swapping film Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice, which co-starred Culp, than an exemplar of hip, with Natalie Wood, on Turner Classic Movies (my favorite TV channel, but of course!). I was too young to be admitted to a theatre when Bob first came out, and when I saw it on TV I was perplexed by the ending and pondered exactly what it meant.

The next day, still puzzled, I went to a screening at the Motion Picture Academy, and who just happened to be sitting in the audience? You guessed it: Robert Culp. I politely asked him what the ending meant and although he was stunned by my imbecility, politely told me. Only in L.A. could this happen! (Alas, within a few months, the then-79 year old actor passed away.)

Awake in a World That Encourages Sleep is being performed through Feb. 26 on Fridays and Saturdays at 8:00 p.m. and Sundays at 2:00 p.m. at the Electric Lodge, 1416 Electric Avenue, Venice, CA 90291. For ticket info see here. (The 19^th annual Los Angeles Women’s Theatre Festival also takes place at the Electric Lodge beginning on March 22.)

Ed Rampell