We’re all familiar with the idea of “The American Dream”, even if we don’t know precisely what it embodies.

At the beginning of the American experiment, in the late 1700s, the dreams were lofty ones: democracy, liberty and equality. Since the Great Depression, however, the dream has taken a more prosaic aspect: material success; upward mobility.

In microcosm, playwright Lynn Nottage’s Sweat shows us what happens when the “Dream” becomes an impossibility for working people.

James Fraser, Yure Covich and Tinashe Mangwana in Sydney Theatre Company’s Sweat. Photo © Prudence Upton

The microcosm here is the town of Reading, Pennsylvania. The action is set mostly the late 1990s, when manufacturing centres like this were experiencing waves of a job losses as companies offshored their operations to low-wage economies including Mexico.

Except for scenes set some years later in a parole office, Nottage confines the story to a local tavern, for decades the social hub for workers of a steel-tube plant. There we meet machinists Tracy (Lisa McCune) and Cynthia (Paula Arundell) on a boozy late-nite high, kicking back and dancing to the jukebox.

Tracey (Deborah Galanos), the third member of the gang, is blearily...