'Waiting for Lefty' Off-Broadway review — a rallying cry for workers' rights

Read our review of Waiting for Lefty off Broadway, a new, expanded revival of Clifford Odets's 1935 play directed by Steven Pasquale for Classic Stage Company.

Summary

• Waiting for Lefty is a 1935 Clifford Odets play about a taxi driver union deciding whether to strike
• Director Steven Pasquale's revival turns the 40-minute play into a 70-minute production with movement, original music, and historic protest songs
• The show's various elements don't all cohere, but the play remains timeless in its support for workers' rights
• The show is recommended for fans of Bob Dylan, union members and workers, and fans of rustic ensemble musicals like The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Copperfield!, and Swept Away

One could easily imagine a real union meeting taking place at Classic Stage Company's Lynn F. Angelson Theater. With audiences seated on three sides of the room, you could stand center stage and lock eyes with each person when the house lights are on. You could pick a seat and see all your fellow attendees offering comments and questions from anywhere in the room. You could even keep the discussion going in the lobby's coffee shop afterward. In this way, it's the perfect setting for a revival of Waiting for Lefty, Clifford Odets's 1935 protest play about taxi drivers debating a possible labor strike.

We're dropped right into the middle of a meeting in which union boss Harry Fatt (Greg Hildreth) is trying to deter the cabbies from striking while they wait for chairman Lefty Costello to make the final call. Waiting for Lefty, which routinely cuts away to scenes from the workers' personal lives, only runs about 40 minutes as originally written, and it's often performed as part of a double bill as such. In his directorial debut, Steven Pasquale has expanded the show into a 70-minute, standalone event with movement (by Susan Misner), original music (by the duo Yeller Tooth), and existing protest songs performed by the 10-person ensemble. Unfortunately, though, the additions don't deepen Odets's play as much as bloat it in an attempt to hammer home the drivers' struggle as representative of all workers', then and now.

Select vignettes abandon the cabbies and focus on other wronged employees, like a striving lab assistant and a Jewish doctor. Even on paper, the diversions don't entirely cohere, but mix in an even more sprawling array of musical selections — from the suffrage-inspired "Bread and Roses" to the 17th-century "Digger's Song" to the anti-fascist Italian anthem "Bella Ciao" to the period-accurate "Brother, Can You Spare a Dime" from 1932 — and you end up with a Lefty that's all over the place. Misner's choreography, at least, finally clicks during a late-stage movement sequence that reveals the true significance of Zach McNally's presence as an otherwise unnamed dancer.

It's a rare example of the whole not being greater than the sum of its parts. Every part, it's worth noting, is perfectly solid on its own: each stirringly performed song, each scene where not only someone's salary, but their marriage or their moral code, hangs in the balance. Much like in Samuel Beckett's 20-years-later Waiting for Godot, the title character might never arrive — but unlike that play, Lefty ends with the present characters making a decision anyway. When we see cabbie Joe's (Adam Kantor) wife Edna (Tala Ashe) threatening to leave him if he doesn't fight for himself, or to fiancés Florrie and Sid (Sahar Milani and Cameron Scoggins, aka Yeller Tooth) doubting their ability to even have a future in poverty, we understand the personal stakes behind the union members' motivations to take a stand.

Lefty's message is timeless but fairly basic — poverty and greedy bosses bad, living wage good — but Odets excels by resisting the instinct to turn a collective into a monolith, instead thoughtfully fleshing out the varied individuals and perspectives that make up the working class. In a way, Pasquale's patchwork production does the same. But neither a movement nor a show can be truly successful if it's not fundamentally united.

Waiting for Lefty summary

Clifford Odets's 1935 play Waiting for Lefty is mainly framed around a taxi drivers' union meeting, where the workers are waiting for their chairman to arrive and tell them whether to strike. The story is composed of vignettes about the struggles of the union members and other working-class people of the era, and this revival adds period protest songs and movement to further highlight these themes.

Waiting for Lefty was written during the Great Depression, and it is loosely inspired by a real-life NYC cab driver strike that took place in 1934.

What to expect at Waiting for Lefty

Waiting for Lefty may be set in 1935, but we're immediately reminded of its modern relevance via a pamphlet distributed to all audience members. It includes some "amateur statistics" about the eye-popping salaries of two public figures — New York Knicks point guard Jalen Brunson and tech trillionaire Elon Musk — that actually aren't comparable at all. If there's a massive pay gap between both those very rich people, imagine the chasm between them and the working class.

This is the extent to which the audience is part of this Lefty, even though the show has historically cast the audience as union meeting attendees. We still are, one supposes, but there's no participation involved.

Waiting for Lefty runs 70 minutes with no intermission.

What audiences are saying about Waiting for Lefty

Audiences have shared mixed responses to Waiting for Lefty in early performances, with some wishing they knew about its nontraditional format but largely agreeing about its enduring relevance. As of writing, the production has a 63% audience approval rating averaged from 19 reviews on the forum Show-Score.

• "The modest staging uses the space cleverly with excellent lighting and recorded sounds along with great songs of the era that is a joy to hear performed live with such rigor and energy. The issue of workers demanding their rights and expecting a living wage are sadly as relevant today as they ever were. But the show wears its politics on its sleeve, ideas are front and center, characters are thin societal archetypes with no subtlety, and so it's not a particularly good play in my opinion. But you can't deny the energy and the power of the ideas resonating in this intimate production." - Show-Score user GreatAvi
• The play is extremely slight. I like to go into shows blind, but I think I would have enjoyed it more had I known it was just 50 minutes of short vignettes [...] I was never bored, but I enjoyed the show more as a well-sung revue of protest songs than a play proper." - Mezzanine user Justin Longo
• "This is a quality production [...] The story is elegantly underscored with musical interludes from the duo Yeller Tooth." - Mezzanine user Bob Stone

Read more audience reviews of Waiting for Lefty on Show-Score.

Who should see Waiting for Lefty

• Fans of Bob Dylan's music will enjoy the similar folk style of the historic protest songs featured in this revival. This Lefty also has a similar structure to the Dylan musical Girl From the North Country, in which the music sets the tone and ambience rather than advancing the plot.
• Union members will appreciate the show's pro-union stance and its thoughtful, specific examinations of working-class people's lives.
• Perhaps it's recency bias, as I saw The Curious Case of Benjamin Button off Broadway less than 24 hours before Lefty, but fans of that musical and others like Copperfield! and Swept Away may find similar hallmarks in Lefty: a rustic aesthetic, a working-class sensibility, and a multitasking ensemble cast.
• If you like shows on the shorter side, Waiting for Lefty will have you in and out in less time than a union meeting.

Learn more about Waiting for Lefty off Broadway

Waiting for Lefty is a timeless rallying cry for workers' rights, but this revival has some more organizing to do.

Learn more and get Waiting for Lefty tickets on New York Theatre Guide. Waiting for Lefty is at Classic Stage Company through November 29.

Photo credit: Waiting for Lefty off Broadway. (Photo by Marc J. Franklin)