Clifford Odets’ masterpiece, Awake and Sing, is as robust, emotional and gritty as the Great Depression itself. As Odets describes it, each of the characters share a fundamental activity — a struggle for life amidst petty conditions. Crowded together in a cramped Bronx tenement and laid low by the Great Depression, this moving portrait of a Jewish family is both funny and heartbreaking as they cope with survival and cling to dreams of a brighter future.

War looms across the ocean, anti-Semitism is on the rise, capitalism is corrupt, the American economy is shaken to its roots, immigrants are uneasy and the family unit is in upheaval. No, this isn't a rundown of contemporary headlines, but a concise summary of the themes that run through the plays of Clifford Odets, one of the hottest playwrights of the 1930s, and a man whose work now speaks loudly to contemporary audiences.

Chicago theater companies seem to have a particular flair for Odets' work, perhaps because they were originally written for New York's fabled Group Theatre, whose close-knit, close-to-the-bone way of working was a model for this city's Off-Loop ensembles.

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Synopsis from:  http://www.timelinetheatre.com