Audiences are transported back in time to 1935 in Awake and Sing! at the Almeida this month - and right into the front room of a Jewish family struggling with the Great Depression.

At the centre of the household is Bessie, played powerfully by Stockard Channing (renowned for playing First Lady Abbey Bartlet in The West Wing and of course her role as Rizzo in the film Grease ). As matriarch of the house, she pours all her energy and authority into saving her family from financial ruin – something her neighbours face daily with evictions from their Bronx tenement apartments. And if that means stepping on dreams and manipulating people along the way? Then she’s fine with it.

Except that her family doesn’t like being stepped on. Her father, a Marxist dreamer, continues to dream, her son Ralph continues to date the orphan immigrant she forbids him to see, and her socialite daughter, Hennie, just won’t roll over when she gets pregnant and is forced to marry a ‘lowly’ Russian. It’s only Bessie’s husband, Myron, a weak, self-confessed failure, who adheres.

Every moment of this Clifford Odets play revolves around money – the powerlessness people feel without it, the control people have with it and the desperate acts people take to get it. Within the two hours, there’s an apparent suicide, abandonment of a child and so many devious tricks, it’s laughable.

Although set in a dark period of American history, Michael Attenborough’s Awake and Sing! is compulsive viewing. As well as feeling like a fly-on-the-wall, the sensational acting makes the frustration and oppression of the time palpable. Thankfully, the clever, funny words spat back and forth in those broad New York accents, serve as a very welcome release. Altogether? An unmissable production.

Awake and Sing! runs until 20 October. To buy tickets, call the box office on 020 7359 4404. Evening performances are held at 7.30pm, Saturday matinees at 3pm.

Coutts & Co is proud sponsor of the Almeida Theatre.

By Barbara Walshe

Photography by Hugo Glendinning