AWAKE & SING to Run 9/26-11/29 at Odyssey Theatre

Gritty, passionate, funny and heartbreaking, Awake and Sing! by Clifford Odets continues to resonate 80 years after its 1935 premiere by the Group Theatre. Director Elina de Santos and lead actress Marilyn Fox return to the Odyssey Theatre Ensemble with a 20th anniversary revival of the smash Odyssey production that ran for nine months in 1994-95. Also returning from that production are Richard Fancy and Dennis Madden; the three will be joined onstage by David Agranov, Robert Lesser, Allan Miller, James Morosini, Melissa Paladino and Gary Patent. Awake and Sing! opens at the Odyssey Theatre on Sept. 26.

In Awake and Sing!, Odets masterfully captures the hopes and struggles of a lower-middle-class, three-generation Jewish family living in a Bronx apartment during the Great Depression. "Here, without a dollar you don't look the world in the eye. Talk from now to next year - this is life in America," says family matriarch Bessie Berger (Fox).

"[Odyssey Theatre associate artistic director] Beth Hogan and I feel so strongly about this play and what it has to say for today, that we wanted to bring it back," says de Santos. "So many people in 2015 are in the same position as this family, struggling daily with social and economic pressures just to be able to get by. Everything is still skewed to the one percent. Odets talks about the 'system' in this play. It's the same conversation we are having today. In what ways do we need to be responsible to society and to our community?"

Awake and Sing! was Odets' first full-length play, catapulting him to the forefront of the world stage and establishing him as a champion of the underprivileged. It premiered on Broadway at the Belasco Theater, where it was directed by Harold Clurman and starred Stella Adler as Bessie Berger, Sanford Meisner as Sam Feinschreiber, and Morris Carnovsky as Jacob. Veteran theater critic Clive Barnes included Awake and Sing! in his book, "50 Best Plays of the American Theatre." Actor Leonard Nimoy, who played Ralph in a production when he was a teenager, recalled in an interview, "The story paralleled that of my own family. I was so inspired with its illumination of the human condition that I decided to be an actor."

Born to Jewish immigrant parents in 1906, Odets dropped out of school at 17 to become an actor and was one of the original members of the New York City-based, avant-garde, left-wing ensemble Group Theatre. Founded by Harold Clurman, Cheryl Crawford and method-acting guru Lee Strasberg to dramatize the social and political life of their times, the Group Theatre was a response to what they saw as the old-fashioned light entertainment that dominated the theater of the late 1920s. Their vision was of a new theater that would mount original American plays to mirror - and possibly change - life in their troubled times. Over the course of ten years and 20 productions, they altered the course of American theater forever. Turning his attention from acting to playwriting, Odets' first work for the Group, Waiting for Lefty (1935), was a Marxian drama about the awakening and insurgency of the impoverished working classes that aroused immediate international attention. It was followed by Awake and Sing! (1935), his first full-length play. Other plays include Till the Day I Die (1935), Paradise Lost (1935), Golden Boy (1937) and Clash by Night (1942). Odets spent many years in Hollywood writing film scripts including The Big Knife (1949), The Country Girl (1950) and The Flowering Peach (1954).

Set design for Awake and Sing! is by Pete Hickok, lighting design is by Leigh Allen, sound design is by Christopher Moscatiello, costume design is by Kim DeShazo and props are by Katherine S. Hunt. The assistant directors are Tovya Jacobs and Tracey Silver, and Ron Sossi and Beth Hogan produce for Odyssey Theatre Ensemble.

Performances of Awake and Sing! take place on Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m. and Sundays at 2 p.m., Sept. 26 through Nov. 29. (On Sunday, Sept. 27 only, the performance will be at 5 p.m. with no 2 p.m. matinee.) Additional weeknight performances are scheduled on Wednesdays at 8 p.m. on Oct. 14 and Nov. 4, and on Thursdays at 8 p.m. on Oct. 8, Oct. 22, Oct. 29, Nov. 12 and Nov. 19. Three post-performance discussions will take place on Oct. 10, Oct. 24 and Nov. 4 and are included in the ticket price. Tickets are $34 on Saturdays and Sundays; $30 on Fridays; and $25 on Wednesdays and Thursdays, with $20 tickets available for seniors and $15 tickets for students and members of SAG/AFTRA/AEA. There will be three "Tix for $10" performances on Friday, Oct. 2; Wednesday, Oct. 14; and Wednesday, Nov. 4. The third Friday of every month is wine night at the Odyssey: enjoy complimentary wine and snacks and mingle with the cast after the show. The Odyssey Theatre is located at 2055 S. Sepulveda Blvd., West Los Angeles, 90025. For reservations and information, call (310) 477-2055 or go to www.OdysseyTheatre.com.