Through February 2
Clifford Odets Waiting for Lefty is a beautifully
crafted play from very hard times, a play which starts out in the
mumbles before a union meeting to a dramatic call of Strike!
Strike! Strike!
Its roots in Samuel Becketts Waiting for Godot are
very clear, not only in the missing Lefty but also in its episodic
series of incidents.
Lefty is getting a wonderful production from the alliance of
Subversive Theatre Collective and the New Phoenix Theatre Company in
the New Phoenix Theatre. Odets may have turned on his Communist allies two-decades later, but
in the Great Depression, Lefty carried the message that
Capitalism was past it and it was time for The Revolution.
In his directors note, Kurt Schneiderman argues Odets was right
then and is still right now. Interestingly, he
does not update the show, keeping to the time and
the place of a mob-controlled cab drivers union in 1935.
Its a clash between Victor Morales union boss and the working
cab drivers, led by Lefty and Richard Lamberts Joe, marked by the
sawed-off shotgun carrier working with the union leader at the
meeting.
There was a strong radical movement in labor in those days, symbolized
by the rise of John L. Lewis of the United Mineworkers and what
started as the Committee on Industrial Organizing which metamorphosed
into the Congress of Industrial Organizations, allying what became the
United Steelworkers and United Auto Workers and the mass labor unions.
A long time ago, I wrote a newspaper profile of a guy who was probably
a Communist and a key Steelworkers organizer here back in the
Thirties. Four-decades later, I received nasty phone calls for writing about him
and what he did in different times. Hard feelings take a long time to go away, if ever.
Odets wrote of hard times in the middle of the Depression when
managements solution was pay cuts, as opposed to todays overseas
outsourcing and management tax cuts. The cabbies are ready to strike and the boss is holding them off, with
the playwright suggesting a corrupt bargain between management and
labor leaders in the character Clayton (Leon S. Copeland Jr.), outed
as a management spy in various cities in various unions.
The playwright sets the scene at the angry and noisy union meeting,
segueing into the five different reality stories, Joe and wife Edna
(Kate LoConti) who cant feed his kids because pay is so low, Miller
(Hasheen DeBerry) the chemist whos offered a major pay raise if he
will work on poison gas production, Florrie (Sarah Brown) and Sid
(Jeffrey Coyle) who cant marry because he does not make enough as
a cabbie, Phillips (Rich Kraemer) who cant get an acting job to
feed his family and Keith Elkins Dr. Barnes and M. Joseph
Fratellos Dr. Benjamin (Odets role in the original production)
who is fired because the hospital cant afford to keep him, with
the more senior Barnes suggesting its really because hes a
Jewish radical in a hospital dominated by rich WASPs.
Then, Cockeye (Bill Schmidt) storms forward to talk about his loss of
an eye on an industrial job and why its time to strike.
As the fatal news about Lefty arrives, Cockeye tips the balance and
the undecided join him with the climactic call to walk out, overriding
Morales Fatt.
It is really a beautifully constructed show with a playwright
preaching rather than looking for entertainment. Schneiderman buys into this and has a strong cast to work with.
He has Morales, Lambert, LoConti, the dancing Coyle, Brown, Elkins,
Fratello and a dynamic Schmidt.
The two-dozen cast members let Schneiderman establish the sense of the
union meeting, of the members wandering around waiting for the start,
reminding people there are coffee and doughnuts and the radical music
of the day, Florence Reeces Which Side Are You On? and
radical songwriter Woody Guthries This Land is Your Land.
The atmosphere helps it all work because the show really starts before
the union leader steps to the podium, the gunman at the door, the
banner on the stage, the music and the moving, angry cabbies.
Now, Waiting for Lefty may not be your ideological point
of view. Thats fine, but it IS great theater. See it.
Copyright 2005 by Speakupwny.com
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