Waiting For Lefty

As the U.S. economy seemingly collapsed overnight last October, the Great Depression haunted us again ... and there's no playwright who encapsulates that era better than Clifford Odets. He is to the theatre what Woody Guthrie is to music or Dorothea Lange is to photography: the poet of a national trauma. It's a trauma that still obviously haunts us as this past fall became filled with ghosts of Hoovertowns and bread lines. Waiting for Lefty immediately came to mind as I looked at "The State We're In", and became first on the list as I thought about this project.

I've read Waiting for Lefty before. When I assistant directed a production of Awake and Sing! in the early nineties, I tore though most of Odets' complete works very quickly in an effort to be prepared. It was a long time ago, however and this read was a very fresh experience. I was surprised by its brevity, its power, and its focused mixture of hope and rage. In its basic examination of how massive economic forces impact the individual (and what the individual can do about it), Waiting for Lefty is a timeless story that feels like it could be happening today ... but there's another aspect that feels antiquated and outdated and "period".

In a modern production, how do you come to grips with Lefty's fervent passion for Soviet Communism? Odets joined the American Communist Party in 1934, and Lefty is flush with admiration for the movement. This is no theoretical Communism: Dr. Benjamin speaks clearly about wanting to go to Russia, to work in their socialized medicine system. It's hard to imagine that had these characters had been able to see behind the Iron Curtain they would have been so passionate about the cause. Soviet Communism was not the ennobling force for the worker's good that it appeared from the outside, so how does that historical truth inform a modern reading?

It cannot simply be ignored. Though actors, directors and designers could decide on a "pure" production ... the audience knows. There is no way to simply inhabit the wide-eyed optimism Odets and his characters felt. The play changes and darkens as a result, becoming a politicized Waiting for Godot where the only salvation lies in the dream of another life, but that salvation is all illusion (or delusion). Communism will not come to the rescue of people like Joe and Edna or Sid and Florence. All the hope rings hollow, and Lefty becomes far bleaker even than it must have appeared to a Broadway audience in 1935.

Next Week: The Guys by Anne Nelson