Although he lived in Los Angeles, Edward Sakamoto was one of Hawaii’s most popular playwrights; until his death in 2015, his subject matter remained in the islands where he was born and raised.

In such comedies as “Manoa Valley” and “Aloha Las Vegas,” his impeccable ear for dialect and unpretentious, quick repartee brought local people in multi-ethnic, multigenerational families to life. “Mr. Sakamoto’s gift is absolute command of language,” D.J.R. Bruckner wrote in a 1987 New York Times review of “Life of the Land” produced by Manhattan’s Pan Asian Repertory Theatre, adding that his characters’ “speech is refreshingly stripped of the popularized psychological jargon that confounds the familiar world.”

Sakamoto’s plays have been regularly produced by Honolulu’s Kumu Kahua Theatre, where one of his more probing, suspenseful dramas, “Dead of Night,” about a labor union’s attempt to organize workers in 1956, is currently being revived in a production directed by Taurie Kinoshita.

It’s a relevant and timely choice.

Set in pre-statehood Hawaii, “Dead of Night” has new resonance in light of a pending U.S. Supreme Court decision, in Janus vs. American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, that may strike down state laws requiring that public sector workers pay “fair share” fees for unions’ collective bargaining on their behalf.

“I think we’re going to lose that. I’m very concerned,” said Kinoshita, 40, who holds a master’s of fine arts in directing from the University of Hawaii at Manoa. But, she added, the labor issue wasn’t why she “lobbied hard” to direct the play, which was produced at Kumu Kahua in 2003 and which, she said, each new generation should see.

“The backdrop is unions, but the true story is friendship,” she said, explaining that she chose “Dead of Night” for its characters, their relationships and, above all, its realism. It was a welcome challenge after teaching avante garde theater at East 15 Acting School near London, where she and her husband, stage combat director Nicolas Logue, lived for five years; the couple now teach theater arts at Windward Community College, and Kinoshita directed the absurdist “Pelicans” at Kumu Kahua last year.

With “Dead of Night,” whose themes include duty and justice, she felt a pressure to do right by Saka­moto’s traditional structure and art, to bring out the subtle “micro moments” in exchanges between characters as well as the big moments of confrontation: The organizers are betrayed, the boss has them beaten up and they turn on one another, seeking the culprit.

“Like any great work of art, the more you see it the more you notice. Everything is foreshadowed,” she said. “In the opening image, the protaganist is boxing, fighting something — a punching bag — that he could never win against.”

People are what matter to Sakamoto, and the loss of friendship makes “Dead of Night” a tragedy for this and any time.