Playwright: Clifford Odets
At: Remarcable Productions at Gorilla Tango, 1919 N. Milwaukee
Phone: 773-598-4549; $15
Runs through: Aug. 19
BY MARY SHEN BARNIDGE
Legend has it that at the Group Theatre's 1935 premiere of Clifford Odets' sociodrama, when a character exhorts his union fellows to call a strike, the audience unanimously joined in the cry for action against the inhumane working conditions imposed by bosses indifferent to any goals but profit. Such volatile spectator response being unsettling, Waiting For Lefty is usually lumped on classroom syllabi with Brecht's lehrstücke and the WPA projects of America's Great Depression, safely restricting study to its literary and historical significance.
But director Seth Remington and his cast, though possessed of impeccable academic credentials, are not interested in upheaval viewed with lofty detachment, but instead in the perceived similarities between the times that Odets protested and our own. To this end, they replicate the environmental approach specified by the playwright, taking full advantage of the tiny Gorilla Tango space ( the sidewalk in front of which sports a sign reading 'Union Meeting Tonight' ) to so thoroughly obliterate the 'fourth wall' that even seasoned first-row theatergoers ( like me ) found themselves ducking when the rough stuff begins.
Our play opens at a meeting of the Taxi Driver and Garage Employees Union ( Local 128 ) , where a cigar-smoking chairman struggles to keep order over a constituency waiting impatiently for their chosen spokesman, the mysteriously-detained Lefty Costello. As the atmosphere grows increasingly restless ( despite the presence of a shotgun-carrying sergeant-at-arms ) , the men comprising a grievance committee, one by one, present their reasons for proposing a strike, their stories a litany of injustices—starving families, thwarted marriages, unethical practices and institutionalized bigotry. Gradually, there arises a picture of American government under capitalism displaying ominous resemblances to that in Germany, a prospect rendering Communism more and more attractive.
A major problem faced by young actors in 2007 attempting Odets is the author's relentlessly period vocabulary, vernacular encompassing such now-obscure argot as Andy Gump, 'Coffee And' and Pat Rooney. The 16-member cast assembled for this Remarcable Productions debut, however, have immersed themselves into their roles so deeply that they appear to have, only moments before, stepped forth from the vintage illustrations by Herman Rosse that decorate the playbill. Whether an hour in their company affects your opinions on the current political climate is your own business, but you are not likely to soon find stellar ensemble performance work such as that encountered in this unassuming storefront in Bucktown.