First Review of “Waiting for Lefty” –
Something captivating is happening in Hollywood about a half-block south of Santa Monica Boulevard on Orange Drive, almost midway back from the street along a nondescript business complex. It’s happening at the Art of Acting Studio, which until Saturday night had been unknown to me like so many of the scores upon scores of small theaters throughout greater Los Angeles that live so often under the radar hosting productions week in and week out.
Within the cozy theater on that sold-out night I was to see the Harold Clurman Laboratory Theater Company’s premiere staging of Clifford Odets’ landmark 1935 agit-prop drama “Waiting For Lefty,” directed by Don K. Williams. And what I saw was a brilliant embrace of a classic that was absolute magic.
Consisting of a series of vignettes threaded through the framework of meeting of cab drivers (with the title character being their absent and expected leader), Odets’ masterpiece is what launched the Group Theatre into the minds of the social conscience in the 1930s. “Waiting for Lefty” centers on union members meeting to discuss a possible strike while offering glimpses into their desperate lives as they search for a way out of poverty in a world where greed outweighs the value of human life and the only way to escape was to fight together.