The household consists of extended family such as Bessie's father, Jacob, her husband Myron, and their son Ralph, 21, and spinster daughter Hennie, 26.

A Lincoln Center Theater production on Broadway at the Belasco Theatre, opening on April 17, 2006, and closing on June 25, 2006, after 80 performances and 27 previews, won the Tony Award for Best Revival of a Play.

Directed by Bartlett Sher, the cast featured Ben Gazzara (Jacob), Zoë Wanamaker (Bessie), Mark Ruffalo (Moe), Pablo Schreiber (Ralph) and Lauren Ambrose (Hennie).

[3][4] Gazzara and Ruffalo repeated their roles (with Sher directing) in a 2010 L.A. Theatre Works recording of the play that also starred Jane Kaczmarek.

[6] This film production of the play features Walter Matthau[7] (Moe), Ruth Storey (Bessie), Felicia Farr (Hennie), Robert Lipton (Ralph), Leo Fuchs (Jacob), Milton Selzer (Myron), Martin Ritt (Uncle Morty), Ron Rifkin (Sam) and John Myhers (Schlosser).

[citation needed] In 2006, Arena Stage in Washington, D.C., produced the show with director (and Arena's founding artistic director) Zelda Fichandler in a production featuring Robert Prosky as Jacob, and featuring the adoption of Yiddish in the script that conforms to Odets's earlier version of the play, titled I Got the Blues.

[8] Following its American success in revivals, the play was staged in London at the Off-West End Almeida Theatre from August 31, 2007, through October 20, 2007.

[citation needed] The National Asian American Theatre Company in New York produced the play from August to September 2013 at the SoHo Walker Space.

In 2015, The New York Public Theater with National Asian-American Theatre Company presented a production with a cast completely of Asian descent under the direction of Stephen Brown-Fried.