“Waiting for Lefty” review: protest songs in the key to life

The Classic Stage Company’s brick walls and bare stage certainly help create the atmosphere of a Great Depression-era union cab driver recruiting hall. And with the audience seated on three sides of the stage, we are part of the action – representing dozens of invisible drivers – watching the debate over whether to strike over low wages, high taxes and poor working conditions.

In the new revival of Clifford Odets’ 1935 play, “Waiting for Lefty,” inspired by the real New York taxi drivers’ strike of 1934, snapshots of that encounter are interspersed with disparate vignettes of coupled life and exploitation. There’s a taxi driver named Joe (Raffi Barsoumian) who debates the possibility of a strike with his wife, Edna (Tala Ashe, Tony nominee for “English”); a lab scientist (Austin Durant) meeting his boss (Henry Stram), an industrialist who wants to manufacture toxic gases; and a biting doctor (Stram) noting that “doctors don’t run medicine in this country. Men who know their stuff don’t run anything here, except streetcar conductors.”

Odets is having a moment this fall. In New York, “Lefty” will be followed by a Broadway revival of his family drama “Awake and Sing!” ” (1935), while a series of “Golden Boy” (1937), starring Josh O’Connor, recently concluded in London. Among the challenges for any director revisiting “Lefty” are its thicket of dated language and the mostly airless interludes that distract from the oratorical fire and brimstone of the reunion. Actor Steven Pasquale’s direction is as sincere as Odets’ heartfelt cry for equality and fair treatment, with actors playing drivers occasionally interjecting from the audience, ready to chat with the selfish union boss, Harry Fatt (Greg Hildreth), who is trying to stave off a strike from the stage.

The play’s Godot-like main character, the absent Lefty, has been elected president of the strike committee. One of Pasquale’s major adjustments is bringing him — played by Zach McNally — to life in the production’s eerie moments of expressive movement created by choreographer Susan Misner. What the silent presence of Lefty achieves in these ghostly slow-motion tableaux is unclear. A visible left-hander always keeps us waiting.

A more inspired and glorious addition to the production is the music and arrangements of Yeller Tooth, the married folk music duo of Sahar Milani and Cameron Scoggins. Here they composed original music and revived folk and protest standards like the 17th-century “Diggers Song,” “Which Side Are You On?” » by Florence Reece. (1931), “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?” » by Yip Harburg and Jay Gorney. (1932) and John Paul O’Connor’s “Carpal Tunnel” (2006).