American Blues Theater strikes solid gold with ‘Waiting for Lefty’

by Kelly Kleiman | Sep. 09, 2011

Call it agit-prop if you like, or say “If you want to send a message use Western Union;” but if you’re not inspired by Clifford Odets’s Waiting for Lefty as performed by American Blues Theater, you must have ice water in your veins. In a single intermission-free hour, Odets and the troupe condemn corrupt union bosses, company spies, anti-Semites, people who argue against demands for change because they’ll undermine an ally in the White House, capitalists who make poison gas and want to sleep with their chemists, capitalists who bankroll Broadway shows and want to sleep with their actresses, and the gospel of hopelessness that says there’s nothing to be done about any of it. Most important, it reminds us that political change isn’t something that happens; it’s something we have to do. 

Of course I’m precisely the audience for which the piece was written: though not quite a “red diaper baby,” I did have a godfather named Eugene Victor Debs Auerbach. But anyone who values lively and committed theater will love Lefty too. Special kudos to Terry Hamilton for yet another terrific portrayal of someone whose every word is a lie including “and” and “the”* (first Richard Nixon, then Walter Burns and now a character as much like Jimmy Hoffa as is possible without actually disappearing). Kimberly Senior directs this production (as all her others) with such a light touch it would be easy to forget that she was there, except for the fact that the performances are uniformly excellent, the pacing impeccable, and the emotional heart of the play right out there on its sleeve.

Solidarity forever!

——-

Playwright: Clifford Odets. At: American Blues Theater at the Biograph, 2433 N. Lincoln Ave. Phone: 773-871-3000; $25. Runs through: Oct. 2

We are at a union meeting, ostensibly of the New York City taxicab drivers, circa 1935. The gathering of the employed and formerly employed are drawn from a variety of occupations, and as they wait for their tardy chairman—the “Lefty” of the title—we hear their reasons for being there: the sweethearts who postpone marriage and family for want of a secure future. The husband whose wife upbraids him for their hungry children. The Jewish surgeon fired from her hospital job, replaced by an incompetent (but well-connected) quack. The lab assistant offered lucrative benefits in exchange for working on biological weapons—and informing on her supervisor. The actor whose regional experience (including Chicago’s Goodman Theatre) can’t land him a role on Broadway (“Even Jesus Christ couldn’t play [this part]—with all his talent,” grumbles the producer).

With such a record of injustice—did I mention the corporate-friendly union boss and the strike-breaking saboteur?—is it any wonder that citizens on the verge of despair turn to the promise of Communism? If that threat seems as quaint in 2011 as catch-phrases like “coffee-and” or “stalled like a flivver in the snow,” substitute the word “Socialism.” See how familiar it suddenly sounds?

The American Blues Theater company is well-practiced in conveying the dignity inherent in plays celebrating the proletarian diversity of our nation’s populace. Under Kimberly Senior’s meticulous direction, the 25 actors immerse themselves in their disparate roles so wholly that even those stationed in the audience, as in the premiere production by the legendary Group Theatre, are distinguishable from playgoers only by their period clothing. The technical design is likewise first-rate, but Victoria DeIorio’s stirring sound design is worthy of special note.

Don’t fool yourself: This is not a docudrama, flaunting an academic veneer of “historical accuracy.” Clifford Odets’ approach to his material is undeniably romantic. In an age, however, when “truth” is the property of whomever has the most agile wordbenders on staff, sometimes a shot of old-fashioned agitprop is what’s needed to cut through the persiflage. Opinions, goes the saying, are like armpits (or assholes, depending on who’s listening) in that everybody’s got one and the other guy’s always stinks. American Blues’ 60-minute symposium offers you an opportunity to make up your own mind, and isn’t that a luxury nowadays?

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Clifford Odets’ 1935 play centering around a cab drivers’ union planning a strike, first staged by the massively influential Group Theatre in New York, has become one of those plays you read in history and literature classes but rarely see produced these days, when most theater companies tend to believe that audiences are allergic to overly political theater. American Blues Theater’s production–tightly directed, passionately acted by a committed ensemble, perfectly paced–succeeds all the more for keeping the material from feeling even a little dated, almost a century later. Director Kimberly Senior pulls no emotional punches in the multiple vignettes of desperation and impotent rage (all-too-familiar in 2011), but with a light, steady hand that maneuvers between high-stakes scenarios with delicacy and artistry. The acting matches with controlled intensity, and the show’s famous trick of planting actors in the audience to break the fourth wall still feels fresh. (Monica Westin)

At Victory Gardens’ Richard Christiansen Theater, 2433 North Lincoln, (773)871-3000. Through October

I listened to Barack Obama’s jobs speech on my way to see American Blues Theater’s Waiting for Lefty. American blues, indeed. Clifford Odets’s fiery 1935 one-act supplied an almost creepily apt counterpoint to the President’s address. The play starts out at a union hall where cabbies are debating the pros and cons of calling a strike. A commie-baiting, cigar-chomping union honcho is there to explain why this is a politically bad moment to walk out—and lean on troublemakers if persuasion doesn’t work. But the rank and file explain back that they’re bleeding to death. The rest of the hour-long piece alternates between the meeting and wide-ranging vignettes about working life in Depression-era America. A wife goads her husband to man up and get better wages. A doctor is fired because she’s Jewish. A chemist has a most surprising response when her boss asks her to inform against a colleague. In the most powerful scene, a young couple break up because they just can’t afford to get married. Most of it—no, all of it—is pure propaganda. And red propaganda, at that, in the starry-eyed, let’s-all-sing-“The Internationale” manner that was possible when Stalin looked good next to Hitler. But Kimberly Senior’s staging and cast are strong, and there’s a hell of a lot of satisfaction in watching workers hold up their fists and give a loud no, like they only seem to do in Wisconsin these days. —Tony Adler

Clifford Odets’ “Waiting for Lefty,” now being staged by American Blues Theater (through Oct. 2 at Biograph; americanbluestheater.com), is an episodic polemic and one of those dimly remembered works that is not the play that many people think they know. But Kimberly Senior’s production contains a number of beautiful portraits of Americans under duress. There are some formidable actresses in this production, including Mechelle Moe and Cheryl Graeff, but the performance that stands out is from Gwendolyn Whiteside, the actress playing Florrie.

Just as “Porgy and Bess” is now best known as an opera, so is “The Front Page” now best known as a movie. In the original 1928 stage version, Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur introduced Broadway audiences to the scoop-hungry crime reporters who covered Chicago in the age of Al Capone. But when Howard Hawks made “His Girl Friday” in 1940, he turned Hildy Johnson, the tough-guy reporter of “The Front Page,” into a woman, in the process changing a hard-nosed farce about journalism in America into a screwball comedy about the perils of workplace romance. The results were so funny that no one complained, but the play (and the earlier 1931 film version) got lost in the shuffle, and revivals are now as scarce as evening papers.

All praise, then, to Chicago’s TimeLine Theatre for resurrecting “The Front Page” and giving it a staging so full of brassy brio that you’ll wonder why you ever settled for less. Performed in the round in the company’s 99-seat theater, it puts you so close to the action that you can actually smell the ketchup on the hamburgers eaten by the characters in the first act. The acting fizzes with outrageous, nose-thumbing vitality—PJ Powers and Terry Hamilton couldn’t be better as Hildy Johnson and Walter Burns, Hildy’s unscrupulous boss—and the ultrarealistic set, designed by Collette Pollard, is so suitably grubby that you’ll want to grab a broom and start sweeping.

What is most striking about TimeLine’s production, directed with lip-smacking gusto by Nick Bowling, is that it doesn’t sandpaper the rough edges of the reporters who wait impatiently to cover the hanging of a small-time anarchist (Rob Fagin). They are brutes who make no effort to hide their brutality, and they care about nothing but getting the story, least of all the bruised feelings of the anarchist’s girlfriend (Mechelle Moe), whom they treat like gum on the sole of a worn-out shoe. The contrast between the savage cynicism with which the reporters are portrayed and the comic dynamism of the play’s door-slamming plot is startlingly modern, as are the play’s overlapping dialogue (which Hawks borrowed for “His Girl Friday”) and blunt language.

While this production would surely pack a kidney punch on a conventional proscenium stage, it’s the in-your-face intimacy of TimeLine’s “Front Page” that makes it so special. If you wonder why regional theater continues to hold its own in an age of above-the-title stars and billion-dollar special effects, buy a ticket and see for yourself.

—Mr. Teachout, the Journal’s drama critic, blogs about theater and the other arts at www.terryteachout.com. Write to him at tteachout@wsj.com.