Clifford Odets, one of the leading playwrights of left-wing social protest and a master craftsman of Depression-era Jewish family dynamics, would no doubt be proud of the soaring New Jewish Theatre production of one of his best plays, "Awake and Sing,"...

In the Great Depression, Clifford Odets wrote "Awake and Sing!," a play about a family's responses to challenges that sound eerily familiar. Kathleen Sitzer, artistic director of the New Jewish Theatre, ticks off those challenges: A broken economy, war...