The first thing you notice about The Humans — aside from its impressive, two-tier set, a musty duplex-style apartment in Lower Manhattan — is that the actors are unmiked, and seem to be shouting at one another. And you realize: This is how theater was meant to be and still works in the right context. And this play is the right context. Somehow, the idea that this family of effusive but suppressive Irish would need their voices to be artificially amplified feels counterproductive. It’s the naturalism of their overlapping speech (sometimes impossibly mumbled) that is one of its assets.

Not much happens in The Humans, which takes place in real-time over a Thanksgiving meal. That’s a feature of a lot of modern theater, which observes its characters without judgment (the name itself conveys a lot). It’s as if the 21st century has suddenly discovered Chekhov anew. What’s unexpected is how Steven Karam’s play is filled with tropes and “universality,” yet doesn’t feel that way. It’s alternatively frustrating and funny, sad and mysterious. You’ll recognize a lot of your own family in the Blakes, even if the particulars are different.

— Arnold Wayne Jones

At the Winspear Opera House through May 20.
ATTPAC.org.