Working
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Greaves, Monely, Duvall, Champlin
Photo by Craig Schwartz
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By January Riddle
From opening scene to closing number, The Old Globe theatre’s delightful musical production, Working, based on the 1974 best-selling book by Studs Terkel, is true to character, its author’s and its own.
The stage manager’s booming voice and his presence visible at the controls, the musicians ensconced on the top floor of Beowulf Boritt’s Chicago walk-up set instead of in the pit, the stage hands and dressers prompting and buttoning the actors on stage, the six actors shuffling desks and chairs to create an office set—Working begins by showcasing its own workers.
Then, thanks to Gordon Greenberg’s adept direction and an enormously talented and skilled cast (four of the six boast Broadway credits; all have New York stage experience), this West Coast premiere moves brightly along to exhibit 26 others, typical Americans who, with one exception (a wealthy socialite fundraiser), feed and clothe themselves and their families by their labors.
Reworked from the original 1978 Broadway musical and adapted by Stephen Schwartz (of Wicked fame) and Nina Faso (one of the Godspell creators), this modern version includes a few updates, some paring down, and, best of all, several new songs by Lin-Manuel Miranda. He is the composer and lyricist of In the Heights,the 2008 Tony winner for best musical.
The stories themselves were not sacrificed in the updating, for they still belong to those whom Terkel interviewed and chronicled 35 years ago. Not just the concept and the premise, but even the songs themselves come from the words of those who lived the day-to-day stories they told. This is a non-fictional musical collage, a rare art form based on human commonalities.
Listening to the sung and recited tales evokes images of what it means to earn a living in (mostly) middle-America. With only a couple of exceptions (hedge fund manager, project manager), none of these folks would refer to what they do as “a career.” These are jobs, plain and simple, but performed by individuals who share similar feelings, ideas, and dreams. This play is a collection of vignettes featuring those working people, a retelling of the stories they told to radio personality and Pulitzer prize-winning author, Studs Terkel.
In the production, and even in the songs themselves, we hear the answers to the interviewer’s questions. But it is the questions that tie the tales together, working the squares into the tapestry that is American life as lived by those whose labors go largely unnoticed.
“What do you do to earn a living?” Studs would ask. The answers shape the narratives of cleaning lady, fireman, steel worker, school teacher, flight attendant, hedge fund operator, computer technician, prostitute, and a host of other occupations. Listening to the ways in which each describes the day to day from paycheck to paycheck is like being in an open-mike audience, with the variety of languages, inflections, and attitudes.
And when they tell what they do, they cannot help but answer the next question: “How do you feel about your job?” There is humor and there is pathos, and there are surprises. The fast food clerk says he smells like a burger, but when he goes on deliveries, he experiences freedom. The teacher is stymied, wondering what happened to the polite children in her disciplined classroom of forty years ago, thwarted in her desires to educate every pupil. The cleaning lady is philosophical; the fireman is despairing.
Few people, today or back “in the day,” end up like they thought they would. So they answer the next question with some regret, even a bit of self-blame for failures mostly not of their own making.
“What were your dreams before you took this job?” The flight attendant thought her job would be romantic and exciting. The prostitute discovered (while still in high school) that she could make $500 a day by renting out her body and that her parents’ plans for her were no match for the wage paid by the johns. The factory worker revives her daydreams just to get through the “goddam awful boring job” that is “me and my machine…for the rest of my life.”
But far from being a depressing collage of the oppressed, Working reveals the upside of being human in answers to the interviewer’s last question.
“What are your hopes for the future?” Inevitably, the future—for them and for everyone really—lies in aspirations for the children. The ironworker knows he worked “my whole damn life, so’s I could give the better life…to my kid.” The domestic worker boasts about her daughter, smart and pretty, for whom “I’m gonna make her a better day.”
As if in response, the actors make this production shine. Nehal Joshi, a versatile young everyman, is believable as an Indian tech-support employee, an American fast food clerk, and a European stonemason. Marie-France Arcilla possesses a Joan Baez voice that she uses to project fear and annoyance as well as sweetness, especially in her portrayal of the flight attendant with a scary secret. Donna Lynne Champlin plays all her roles broadly and fearlessly—from office worker to schoolteacher—and her waitress is a showstopper. With shameless sensitivity and without pathos, Danielle Lee Greaves makes the domestic worker, the receptionist, and the prostitute laudable people. When it comes to heavies, Adam Monley drew the short straw with the smarmy hedge-fund manager, one of the updates that intrudes rather than compliments the show. But his cop-turned-fireman offers a thoughtful new perspective to the hero image.
In an appealing paradox, stage and television actor Wayne Duvall lifts ironworker Mike Dillard to skyscraper heights in his portrayal of a hardworking guy who wants to be his son’s hero. As retiree Joe Zutty, Duvall reaches in and gives your heartstrings a tug. (If Joe’s song about his days doesn’t bring a tear to your eye, you have no heart.)
We mustn’t be reluctant to feel these characters, as they are part of our heritage, elements of ourselves. Empathy and understanding is the underlying spirit of this production, as it was from its author’s original conversations. It succeeds because it has character, and it remains true to that, even decades later.
Working” plays at San Diego’s Old Globe theatre in Balboa Park through April 12. Performances are: at 7pm Sun/Tues/Wed; 8pm Thu/Fri/Sat, with 2 pm matinees Sat/Sun. Tickets are $53-$79.
Reservations: 619-23-GLOBE or www.TheOldGlobe.org
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