Awake and Sing! at Huntington Theatre

The economic ravages of '30s New York threaten to destroy the tenuous ties that bind a working-class family in social dramatist Clifford Odets' (The Flowering Peach) acclaimed Depression-era drama. First produced in 1935, Awake and Sing! tells the passionate and ultimately hopeful story of the Bergers, a family of Jewish immigrants living in the Bronx, as they deal with the hardships of the era. Bessie, the Berger matriarch, is even prepared to crush her children's dreams in order to keep the struggling clan intact, but the irrepressible spirit of youth refuses to be extinguished in Odets' soaring, timeless ode to the American working class.