Customer Reviews

Waiting for Lefty and Other Plays

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

There are many aspects of Odets' work that have not particularly aged well. Frankly because he consciously was writing to reflect contemporary (for the 1930's) American Society with an extreme and blatant Leftist leaning, much of his dialouge, characterization and politicising has dated. Yet these selections still contain powerful dramatic representations of life that illuminate a segment of society that literally was ignored by the media of the time.

It is arguable, but I think it's true that without Odets' dramatization of the plight of the common man, we wouldn't have witnessed the (admittidly more poetic and timeless) works of Miller, Inge and Williams. Odets, perhaps more than any other playwright of his time, placed "the little guy" in the center of the tragic form. As one reads these plays, one becomes aware that the rules are beginning to break right before the reader's eyes.

Odets' plays are, if one is able to check their political hat at the door, fine works of dramtic lit that prove most actable while also allowing a range of staging possibilities. His narratives are clean and direct in the sense that they give the characters a series of clear objectives and actions as well as conflicts to confront. This collection is a most welcome and necessary addition to any theatre library.

After joining the American Communist Party in 1934, Odets used a taxi drivers' strike from that year as the inspiration for his first play, Waiting for Lefty . The play is an agit-prop that borrows heavily from Communist ideology and promotes collective action and unionization as the only means to tip the scales of power away from big business and toward the worker. The characters in the play grow aware of themselves as the oppressed class as opposed to the powerful ruling class, and when this "class consciousness" becomes too burdensome, they see no other option but to strike.
This dialectic play gives the audience an insight into the ills of American society and encourages them to change their reality. It was written and performed at a time when the legend of the self-made man held no more waters. The country was still struggling with the aftershocks of the stock market crash of 1929. Unemployment rate reached its highest peak in the United States and employers were reducing wages drastically. As depicted in John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath (1939) and Tillie Olsen's Yonnondio: From the Thirties (written in the 1930s, published in 1974), workers were treated brutally by their employers. As Steinbeck showed, workers had to bond together and fight for their meagre wages which dropped even more because of the intense competition. In this fight, unionization and strikes were their only weapons.

"...So in the end nothing is real. Nothing is left but our memory of life. Not as it is...as it might have been...."
So says Leo, soft natured, burnt out, over worked, unappreciated, hang dog Odetian father in Paradise Lost. But such sentiment could come from any of these six plays and not be out of place.
In these six plays, featuring some of the most brilliant and emotional American playwriting ever, Clifford Odets hammered and chiseled circumstances of urban American life in the 1930's. Full of hard edged people who demand it of others, and naive people who refuse to be brought down by the prevailing winds, Odets creates a world that may seem dated and bygone. But the turmoil and the choices are neither.
In Waiting for Lefty taxi cab drivers must contend with horrendous working conditions, including violence and intimidation from managment if they strike. Scenes from worker meetings, home life between a husband and wife on the edge, and between two scientists politicing towards blacklisting and espionage.
In Awake and Sing and Paradise Lost families living in small cramped apartments must strive for peace and simple comforts while income is barely enough, their children, desperate for a better life, risk their lives through crime, or take up with sordid, cynical and compromised people. Homes are taken away, suicides and paralysis grip them.
In Till the Day I Die, two brothers go from being tight excited comrades, rebelling against the Fascist Nazi encrouchment, to being torn apart and suspicious after one of them is captured, tortured, abused, compromised and released.
In Golden Boy, the sweet heart of a promising violinist turns grey and aggressive when he takes up boxing, letting success, hatred for his family and fear of failure lead him to his own destruction.
In Rocket to the Moon a dentist falls for his young secretary, who dreams of a better life, beyond a hard scrabble existence as three men vie for her affections.
All the writing is incredible. A few noteworthy quotes:
From Till the Day I Die:
Ernst: Yes, peace! in the cell there-I know I stayed alive because I knew my comrades were with me in the same pain and chaos. Yes, I know that till the day I die there is no peace for an honest worker in the whole world.
Tilly: Till the day I die there is steady work to do. Let us hope we will both live to see strange and wonderful things. Perhaps we will die before them. Our children will see it then. Ours!

Ernst: These guns are complicated pieces of machinery. Our Germans make them like works of art. Tilly, Carl, our agony is real. But we live in the joy of a great coming people! The animal kingdom is past. Day must follow the night. Now we are ready: we have been selected in a terrible fight, but soon all the desolate places of the world must flourish with human genius. Brothers will live in the societs of the world! yes, a world of security and freedom is waiting for all mankind! Do your work, comrades.

From Paradise Lost:
Kewpie: A sleeping clam at the bottom of the ocean, but I'll wake you up. I'm through with the little wars: no more hacking, making a pound in a good day. Like old man Pike says, every man for himself nowadays, and when you're in the jungle you look out for the wild life. I put on my Chinese good luck ring and I'm out to get mine. You're on the first stop!

Libby: Hon, you're mussing me up again.
Ben: Happy?
Libby: Sure, every day's Saturday.
Ben: What to do think of her?
Kewpie: She's a juicy baby, all right.
Ben: Four stars!
Kewpie: But dumb-nothing between the acts!

Clara: In fifty years we will lay in the rain."Who's this?" they'll say. "A couple of old fools!"
Leo: This can't happen forever! Nothing stands still in life! Pike is right! Backwards or forwards, and even backwards is going ahead.
Clara: For God's sake, do yourself a personal favor and listen to me! What will we do, now?
Leo: We'll go on living.

From Golden Boy:
Siggie: That's a positive personality!
Tokio: That's Eddie Fuseli.
Siggie: Momma-mia! No wonder i smelled gun powder! Pop, that's a paradox in human behavior: he shoots you for a nickel-then for fifty bucks he sends you flowers!

Rakes, hopeless romantics, Communist rebels, diligent work horse Americans, woman of ill repute, hard, tough as nails mothers, looking out for their naive and love-dumb kids...Like all great writers Odets language is original, and stands the test of time.

Great seller. Item arrived quickly and as described. I needed it for a class and it arrived well before classes started, which is what I needed. I would buy from this seller again.

There has always been a place for didactic political plays, like the one under review here, "Waiting For Lefty", within the left wing movement. Such plays have value both as a means to express certain plebeian cultural values that are not expressed through mainstream bourgeois cultural institutions and for purely propaganda purposes to get the "message" out to the sometimes illiterate, just barely literate, or merely recalcitrant masses. These are both honorable and acceptable means in order to create an "alternative" cultural expression looking forward to the new culture of the new communist society.

Moreover, there has been no lack of those cultural workers, including playwrights and actors, who, while not plebes themselves, have readily come over to our side, at least for a while. This movement toward the plebes is episodic but takes a big leap forward especially in times of general social turmoil like the period of the Great Depression in the 1930's and in the social movements of the 1960s. That is the case with the playwright under review, Clifford Odets, and the cultural organization that initially sponsored his works, The Theater Guild of New York, in the 1930s.

Put a collectivist spirit in the air as a result of serious class struggles for union recognition in some a massive strike wave in 1934, a turn by the Communist International toward the popular front and alliance with previously ignored or despised bourgeois and petty bourgeois elements, some hunger actors and related cultural workers, AND the bright lights of New York and you have the Theater Guild. Its illustrious personal included many young performers who would go on to, if not honorable theater careers, then long ones like Lee J. Cobb and Elia Kazan who made appearances in Clifford Odets works.

As to "Waiting For Lefty" it certainly is a period piece of those times. The subject, a pending strike of taxi cab workers, and how various characters came to class consciousness, or at least of consciousness of the to struggle against the bosses is pretty straight forward. Except, that the Lefty of the title, a known militant worker from whom his fellows had previously taken their political lead is no where to be found. Or rather is found dead, in the end, in some back alley from a boss's thug's bullet. Lefty may have been the catalyst for action, for developing political awareness, but the plebes are on their own now. The class struggle continues. Definitely, as intended, an uplift kind of play that could use a revival today. If not of the play itself then of the need for class struggle theme behind it.

As a leftist, inspiring pieces of literature are not exactly few and far between - but ones this entertaining certainly are. In Odets' work, there is nary a word out of place, and every social comment he has to make is thoughtfully expressed in a gentle fashion unknown to many playwrights.

Awake and Sing! is in particular a piece of art. Odets makes the ideals of social protest easily accessible in dramatic form, and the end result is an educational and thought-provoking read that still manages to be amazing fun.

Unrepentant agit-prop. Odets is lauded as a hero to Marxists, but he was a middle class high school drop-out who rolled over when called in front of the HUAC in the 1950s. Now that that's out of the way...
The play was a product of it's time. Just coming out of the Great Depression, Odets wanted to rail against the social injustices he perceived. But his Broadway audience was made up of the well-to-do middle class that he was railing against. Placing actors in the audience to participate in the show was a laudable effort, but the plot and dialog are melodramatic and, at times, make even suspension of disbelief difficult. I understand why this is an important work as it represents sentiments of a segment of the American population between wars, but, honestly, I found this (very) short play a chore to read. There's nothing in here that gives substantiated reasons to convert to socialism, which I can only imagine was Odets' intention given the over-the-top emotion he calls for from the actors. It really just seems more like another pseudo-intellectual trying to assuage his own guilt at being born into the "bourgeois". But that's just one opinion. Read it for yourself.

I loved reading Waiting For Lefty. I tried to liken it to another play or playwright, but I can't compare it to Tennessee Williams, Neil Simon, or even Moilere! I think the best way to get a taste for it is to get it for yourself. It's definitely worth your time!