New York Stages Clifford Odets's 1935 Season All Over Again

New York is staging two Clifford Odets plays in a single season for the first time since 1935 — the year the playwright, then 28 and previously unproduced, became nationally famous almost overnight.

Steven Pasquale is directing a downtown revival of "Waiting for Lefty" at Classic Stage Company, running through Nov. 29. Starting Dec. 15, Manhattan Theater Club will stage "Awake and Sing!" at its Broadway house, the Samuel J. Friedman Theater.

The symmetry is exact. The agitprop "Waiting for Lefty" opened Jan. 6, 1935, in a small New York theater. Six weeks later, the Group Theater presented "Awake and Sing!" on Broadway — Odets's breakthrough. More than 91 years on, the pairing repeats, and the source of the news cycle calls it seemingly by chance.

Why do actors keep returning to Odets?

The plays' dialogue is the draw. Odets's characters speak in streetwise, Old Testament-meets-the-Depression poetry — talk that, as the original report puts it, "feeds action like blood feeds muscle."

The cast lists back the claim. Past productions of "Awake and Sing!" starred John Garfield in 1935, Al Pacino in 1967, Frances McDormand and Harry Hamlin in 1984, and Mark Ruffalo and Lauren Ambrose in 2006. Across those decades, a naturalistic toughness and a certain galvanic urgency run through the actors forged by Odets's hard talk.

Josh O'Connor just finished a London run as the boxer Joe Bonaparte in Odets's 1937 "Golden Boy" at the Almeida. The filmed production reaches movie theaters through National Theater Live starting Nov. 5. In the play, Joe's trainer Tokio describes what happens when a fighter gets good: "he slips and slides — he travels with the punch." The report's verdict on O'Connor: beautiful in movies, transcendent here.

What does this change for audiences?

In practice, it offers a rare side-by-side test. A ticket buyer can see the rough agitprop work and the polished family drama within weeks of each other, at two venues, under two directors — and judge whether Odets's 1935 reputation holds in 2025's New York.

The claim that this is Odets's "best year since 1935" rests on scheduling luck rather than a coordinated tribute; no festival or anniversary program ties the productions together, at least according to the source. That caveat matters less than the fact itself: two major New York companies, Classic Stage and Manhattan Theater Club, have both bet a slot on a playwright whose last comparable moment came nine decades ago.

If "Golden Boy" via NT Live finds an audience on Nov. 5, and both New York stagings land, Odets may not wait another 91 years for his next season.