Miriam Kressyn has done a masterful job of translating and adapting the play to this company's requirements. Odets wrote this imaginative account of the flood in language that had a wonderfully New York Jewish intonation. Noah, of course, lived long before there were Jews, but in making the play a sort of idiomatic Jewish folk tale, Odets did with the Jews what Marc Connelly did for the blacks with "The Green Pastures."

It is a comedy, but a thoughtful one, with its share of breast beating and introspection. Roger Sullivan has directed it with sensitivity and imagination, and the talent of the cast is enhanced by Brian P. Kelly's tidy, pleasurable set in which the sharp edge of reality is softened by an almost caricatured shading. (Yes, the ark is in evidence onstage, too.)

Noah, as portrayed winningly by Sol Frieder, an actor of wide experience in English-speaking theater but a newcomer to the Yiddish, is a somewhat raffish figure, a tippler who is burdened by messages from the Lord, the most important of which are insider tips on the flood. His wife, Esther, is realized by Zypora Spaisman, a tart and seasoned comedienne of Yiddish theater, as a needle-tongues housewife reminiscent of Arthur Kober's Bronx ladies. Ms. Spaisman appears not only as a loving wife, but as a tough one who binds together this odd family with its three very different sons and their spouses.

Noah, as he puts up with the antics of his boys, Ham, Shem and Yaphet, keeps asking the Lord why He chose this household for salvation in a doomed world. Yaphet (Richard Silver), the son sensitive to the horror of the impending destruction, refuses to board the ark that he has been the main figure in making. He is in love with the wife of the shiftless Ham, and it is not until the end that a marital realignment is established. Shem, the oldest, is out to do business, come hell or high water, and almost sinks the ark with his store of manure collected from the animals aboard; as someone observes, he puts something away for a rainy day.

Daniel Chiel radiates malice as Ham, while I.W. Firestone projects the image of a thoroughly bourgeois Shem. Miriam Gordon is a subtle, shy and beautiful Rachel, wife of Ham, and Sarit Gervai, who alternates in the role with Paula Newman, is a buxom, sexy Zehava, the girl who rescues Yaphet and has an affair with Ham. Paula Teitelbau's Leah is one of a woman zealously devoted to her husband and his estate.

Ira Taxin's music, Ben Gutierrez-Soto's costumes and Tracy Dedrickson's lighting are important elements in capturing the mood of an ancient biblical time in this tastefully staged play. There is a feel of the desert and the feel of the sea and, mostly there is a feel that these are ordinary individuals cast into one of the world's great miracles.

There are funny lines and thoughts to chew on in this "Flowering Peach." An evening aboard of the ark with the Folksbiene on East 55th Street makes for a rewarding winter cruise.