The trouble with families

Depression-era drama: Ellen Ratner plays the matriarch and Charles Dean, right, her husband in Aurora Theatre Co.’s noteworthy production of “Awake and Sing!” (Courtesy Photo)

SAN FRANCISCO — In a sign of the times, two Great Depression-era family dramas are running simultaneously: “The Grapes of Wrath,” about impoverished migrant farmworkers heading toward the West, at Actors Theatre of San Francisco, and “Awake and Sing!” Clifford Odets’ empathetic 1935 examination of a working-class family in Bronx, N.Y.

It’s easy to relate to the travails of both families, and of course both left-leaning writers were ­proselytizing for a better future for the American underclass.

Under Joy Carlin’s sensitive and perfectly modulated direction, Berkeley’s Aurora Theatre Co. does its usual bang-up job, this time with “Awake and Sing!”

The dysfunctional Bergers — controlling, tightly wound Bessie (think Amanda Wingfield of “Glass Menagerie,” but Jewish); her ­nebbishy husband, Myron; her Marxist, old-world father; her lovelorn and frustrated son, Ralph; her embittered daughter, Hennie — could easily be played as stereotypes. But the Aurora actors dig gratifyingly deep.

As played out in the Bergers’ tidy apartment (a carefully observed period set by Nina Ball — you can almost smell the boiled cabbage and mothballs), almost every character reveals overpowering needs.

Serious conflicts abound. Ralph (a youthfully buoyant Patrick Russell) is sick of sleeping on the daybed in the living room; he wants out of his dead-end life.

Grandpa (a simpatico, utterly convincing Ray Reinhardt) once thought he’d change the world. Now, he listens to Caruso records and tries to instill revolutionary fervor in his grandchildren.

Bessie (a fiery, deeply felt portrayal by Ellen Ratner) wants her children to have a better life than she has. Boarder Moe (a slyly charismatic Rod Gnapp) has a yen for Hennie.

Hennie (a feisty, flouncy Rebecca White) doesn’t quite know what she wants, but it’s not her husband, Russian immigrant Sam (poignantly played by Anthony Nemirovsky), who craves acceptance in America.

Uncle Morty (an affable but steely-eyed Victor Talmadge) is all about the money. Only Myron (a gamely grinning, slump-­shouldered Charles Dean) is resigned to a lackluster life.

Will any of them follow Grandpa’s idealistic dictum: “Go out and fight!”? Outside, people’s furniture is being tossed on the street as their homes are foreclosed on; others are beginning to leap off buildings.

As seen here, Odets doesn’t probe moral conundrums in as great depth as, for example, Arthur Miller. He doesn’t write as poetically as ­Tennessee Williams, and “Awake” doesn’t have the complexity of Steinbeck’s “Grapes” — to name just a few of Odets’ contemporaries.

But this is a touching look at issues not too different from the ones we face today.

Theater review

Awake and Sing!

Presented by Aurora Theatre Co.

• Where: 2081 Addison St., Berkeley
• When: 7 p.m. Tuesdays; 8 p.m. Wednesdays-Saturdays; 2 and 7 p.m. Sundays; closes Sept. 27
• Tickets: $15 to $55
• Contact: (510) 843-4822, www.auroratheatre.org