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by Clifford Odets, directed by Jesse Ryder Hughes

Column 13 Actors Company, Dancemakers Centre, Toronto

November 14-29, 2008

Column 13 is not a theatre company that shies away from risks.  While it is presenting the Canadian premiere of the brand new American play Unconditional by Brett C. Leonard, it is also staging Waiting for Lefty, a 1935 one-act play by American Communist playwright Clifford Odets.  When just a few weeks ago, Republicans were calling then-candidate Obama a “socialist” as if it were the most abhorrent word in the political lexicon, a play like Waiting for Lefty comes as a real eye-opener.  It shows that there was a time when an American could write an overtly Marxist play that would, incredibly, become wildly successful in the US.  

The play focusses on a meeting of the taxi union in New York as it decides whether to go on strike or not.  As you make your way to Studio 313,  actors hand you leaflets detailing both sides of the argument.  Union Boss Fatt (Luis Fernandes), protected by a Tommy gun-wielding thug, is against the strike.  Within this frame Odets presents a series of four flashbacks to show how four of the union members came to be here and what has urged them to strike.  The most powerful of these is the first between Joe and his wife Edna played in gripping performances by Brandon Thomas and Megan Murphy.  Joe arrives as a beaten, demoralized man, but Edna unleashes an arsenal of threats, taunts and pleading that turns him around and give him the courage to fight.  If only all the scenes were this intense Column 13’s production could be emotionally explosive despite Odets’ naive belief in the virtues of the Soviet Union.  Fernandes is a standout as a heavy who truly believes he’s on the right side.  David Lafontaine gives a complex performance as Sid, a boyfriend who tries to break it as gently as he can to his girlfriend that his earnings are too low for them ever to marry.  Scott Walker is forceful in two roles, first as a man who exposes a management spy within the union and second as a doctor unable to help a fellow doctor who’s being sacked from hospital work because he’s Jewish.

Anyone who thought that the evils of the big business, the military-industrial complex, non-universal health coverage, workplace spying, xenophobia and racism are contemporary themes will shocked to find them presented so explicitly in Odets’ play.  While the level of the performances is quite uneven, Column 13 must be praised for bringing an eerily relevant but too often forgotten corner of American history and of American drama to light.  

©Christopher Hoile

Note: A version of this review appeared in Eye Weekly 2008-11-17.

Photo: Cast members of Waiting for Lefty.