Waiting for Lefty

You don’t hear the name Clifford Odets much anymore, and if you do, it’s as likely in reference to his name naming during Hollywood’s red scare, or his cavorting with Frances Farmer, than to his work as a playwright. Odets was, in fact, a significant figure in the New York theatre scene in the ‘30s and ‘40s, helping to put the Group Theatre on the map, working closely with Lee Strasberg, Harold Clurman and others, presenting edgy, socially relevant plays, and partially paving the way toward the Actors Studio and all that it, like the Group before it, brought and changed.

Waiting for Lefty was not Odets’ first play, nor was it considered his best. It was, however, his first to be produced, and it marked the first big hit for the Group Theatre. The gritty story of cab drivers contemplating a labor strike resonated with the public, not only in New York, but in productions across the country, and even abroad.

TheatreWest’s powerful new production beautifully recaptures the era and its rhythms, as well as the bleak workaday atmosphere of regular folks anxious to toil for the American dream, while living in constant fear that a rock of the boat will send them overboard.

This is one of those shows where you can almost smell the sweat on the brows, smoke in the air, and dust and grime on the walls and floors. Cast members wander the aisles shouting opinions yay or nay regarding a strike, and the audience often feels like they are attending a labor meeting, not a play about one.

The acting is uniformly forceful, raw, and refreshingly unselfconscious. At its best, Lefty presents the best kind of dramatic performances: good acting that doesn’t seem like acting; telling the story, rather than putting on a display of technique or skills.

The proposed hack strike serves as a framework for seven vignettes, each showing struggles of workers in various fields. Some are better than others in TheatreWest’s production, a highlight being the riveting confrontation between worn-out husband Joe (Paul Gunning) and fed-up wife Edna (Kristin Wiegand). Using only a portion of the unchanged set, one fully feels, through their performances, the stark gloom of this couple’s tiny flat, and the tension that pervades it.

Just as good is the scene involving a downtrodden young actor (Jason Galloway) begging a producer’s secretary, and later the producer himself, for a job. Galloway is touching as the starving thesp, with Alan Schack appropriately brusque as the showman. Sandra Tucker is both humorous and heartbreaking as the secretary.

The latter vignette ends with one of the play’s occasional specific mentions of communism. Such are the only instances where the play feels at all dated. Today’s dismal economic and employment climate, and corporate dehumanizing make it plenty relevant, perhaps painfully so.

Additional acting kudos go to Anthony Gruppuso as the blustery union boss Harry Fatt, and Alan Freeman and Charles Baird as brothers on opposite sides of the labor argument.

In such an evocative production, the designers are stars in their own right. Jeff Rack’s set is bleak, yet strangely beautiful; like a classic depression-era photograph. No costume designer is credited, but the garments are effectively grimy, worn, and spot-on for the period.

Finally, Charlie Mount’s direction shapes and focuses the many quality elements into a stunning overall piece of ensemble theatre.

Waiting for Lefty is unashamedly political, even preachy at times, and would be deadly in lesser hands, but Mount and company understand how to drive this classic vehicle, dings and all, and the result is stunning.

Waiting for Lefty plays Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m., Sundays at 2 p.m., through Oct. 10, at TheatreWest, 3333 Cahuenga Blvd. Reservations and information: 323-851-7977. www.theatrewest.org.