EAST LANSING, MI–More than two hours into the production of Sweat at Michigan State University, I had a rare moment where I recalled I was watching a play and thought to myself, “How can this play end? All of this is still happening.”

Lynn Nottage won a Pulitzer Prize for this very intense, very authentic story about what happens to people in a town that is de-industrializing. It’s nearly impossible to say who the “lead” is because every character has something he or she needs, every character has a story arc and every character changes.

For those who grew up in a certain era, especially if the location was a blue-collar town, all of these characters are familiar. You work in the factory because factory work is stable, well-paying and part of the tradition of your family. It’s hard to get in, but once you do, you stay. You were staunchly pro-union because the union was able to protect you.

That was before NAFTA, before the aggressive union-busting supported by the government and before unions lost the power to demand fair wages, benefits and working conditions for their members.

“Sweat” is the story of what happens to people when those unions fall apart. It’s also a very American story in that it shows the consequences of racism, xenophobia and the pursuit of the dollar.

Directed by Ryan Walsh, it is hard at times to believe that these are students performing in these roles. The acting is superlative. In fact, the actors so fully inhabited their characters that you forgot they were actors.

The opening scene immediately reveals something is amiss as a parole officer (Tyler Marks) has two very different interactions with young men recently released from prison for a crime the audience won’t learn the details of until the very end of the show. Jason, played by Ben Corsi, is covered in Aryan tattoos, angry and unwilling to share much of where he is. There seems to be little that promises his life has turned around or is headed in a good direction, which perhaps is why the parole officer is so hostile with him, unlike his interactions with the next young man, Chris, played by Michale Coffey. The parole officer is gentle with him as Chris humbly explains he is trying to find work but that people don’t want to hire a Black ex-convict.

Central to the story are three women who have formed deep, long-lasting friendships as co-workers at a plant in Reading, Pennsylvania. Katherine Clemons plays Tracey, Kamryn Saratt plays Cynthia and Shelby Ginsburg plays Jessie. The audience will soon learn that Tracey is Jason’s mother and Cynthia is Chris’ mother, but at their first appearance, they are laughing, happy and dancing together as they celebrate Tracey’s birthday.

Their scene takes place in 2000, eight years before the scenes with the parole officer at a time when the crime has not yet been committed and most of the characters have dreams about where they want their life to go. Most of them think that their jobs at the factory will be the means by which they achieve their dreams, which is why it becomes so heart-breaking as we see the events at the factory strip away everything that they ever valued from their physical and mental health to their relationships to their future.

With the exception of the parole scenes, almost everything else takes place at a bar where the characters gather after work. The bartender, Stan (Gabriel Blaze Herdegen), was a former factory employee, a third-generation worker who was injured on the job and could no longer work there. He’s assisted by Oscar (Michael Bolaños), a young man of Hispanic descent who was born in Reading but is still treated with hostility and referenced as an immigrant with all the negative stereotypes that xenophobes carry.

Gabriella Castillo produced a scenic design that contributed to the realism of the show and Welsh made the most of it with his blocking, moving the actors throughout the fully thrust stage. The far side of the stage featured a full bar with the neon signs and all the accoutrements one expects. She and props designer Ariana Moreno followed the rules of everything having a purpose—it wasn’t placed if it didn’t have a reason to be there.

Moreno in particular is to be praised for providing a variety of alcoholic drinks that were served in the appropriate glassware that looked and behaved like alcohol, even though it was most assuredly not really alcohol.

Sound Designer Shannon Schweitzer provided news casts between scenes that help set whether the following scene was taking place in 2000 or 2008 while lighting designers Bunni Gutierrez and Madison Ramsey provided for fluid scene changes and lighting that underlined the action’s drama.

Welsh and his actors worked hard at portraying the various levels of drunkenness that the script required whether it was Ginsburg fully passed out or Stefon Funderburke’s Brucie, Cynthia’s ex-husband and Chris’ father, who had to perform alternately while drunk and while high.

The program does not credit a fight or intimacy director, but both are handled with a high degree of intensity that tell the story in a powerful manner. At one point it was so intense, I cringed and hid my face in my son’s shoulder before forcing myself to turn back and see what was being shown me.

It was important to look because nothing about the violence was gratuitous. It was absolutely the culmination of both the choices characters made and the choices that they had stripped from them.

The tensions and the relationships in “Sweat” are crucial to the story being told and the climax that the play reaches. Nottage spent a lot of time interviewing people in Reading before writing this play and that degree of research shows. In particular, the relationship between Tracey and Cynthia is both symbolic and authentically real and heart-breaking. They are two best friends whose relationship is shredded as the things they need and want in life are stripped from them.

Sarratt exhibits tremendous inner strength as Cynthia, a woman who must be an anchor for others but is still determined to unapologetically seek out a better future for herself. She portrays the appropriate vulnerability without ever sacrificing her power.

Clemons moves and talks the way someone who has spent a lifetime on the floor of a factory does. She has great energy and is quick to passionate emotions, whether joy or rage. She creates a character who has the power to influence others, to drag them down with her. Clemons has the challenging job of creating a character who exhibits racism and xenophobia while still being sympathetic for most of the play. It’s a challenge, but one at which she excels.

“Sweat” is the sort of play that sticks with you long after the final bows. With its length, it is a play that could very easily be done poorly, but the MSU cast owns every moment of the show, fully inhabiting the passions of the characters, the turbulence of the two time periods and the merits and flaws of each person and their dreams.