By Andre Paras
Staff Writer
Shakespeare 70, a local theater company that’s brought adaptations of past and present straight theater without the use of music, was back again at Kendall Hall’s Don Evans Black Box Theater with their most recent production, “Waiting for Lefty.” The play opened on Wednesday, Oct. 16, and closed with a matinee on Sunday, Oct. 20.
As a company, most of Shakespeare 70’s talent are either connected to the surrounding community or are alumni of the College.
“The best thing is being able to work with the students, and to go into their classrooms to talk about the play… and being able to look into the crowd and see students there,” said director Frank Falisi after the show.
Written by Clifford Odets, an American playwright and activist, the original play premiered in the mid-1930s following the Great Depression. Deemed at first as Communist propaganda, it has since been re-evaluated and put on again many times since its first opening. Now, it’s regarded as an American classic for how boldly it challenged the status quo.
The play follows the lives of different New York City taxi drivers in the 1930s arguing whether or not to unionize and go on strike for better wages. It navigates intimate moments with members of the ensemble cast and their tolls of everyday life, living paycheck to paycheck.
Despite never appearing in the play, the cast waits on the character Lefty for the majority of the show, who acts as a radical left-wing symbol and is supposed to lead positive change for these workers to fight for change – but he never shows.
Falisi’s “Waiting for Lefty” opens with characters rising from the same seats the audience is sitting in, wearing contemporary clothing ranging from solid colored tops to a modern New York Mets jersey.
“When the first actress stood up in the audience, I understood that this was going to be something different than a typical play,” said freshman psychology major Gianna Melhorn on her first impressions.
There is no stage, so both the audience and talent are always on the same level. The performance space’s seating is arranged in a thrust, with the audience facing the performers from three different angles. This is a deliberate direction choice from Falisi to both immerse the audience and make viewers feel as equals, as performers walk through the aisles constantly to join or leave scenes.
Early on, a lot of the crowd’s big laughs are derived from on-the-spot crowd engagement and interaction. The audience let out its biggest roar as one of the performers who set the scene revealed his shirt reading “Trump is a scab. Vote Harris,” which sets the tone for this show’s politics and how it aims to reflect the world around us today.
With a modest stage setup, a lot of the production’s heavy lifting via visual style is led by technical director Dale Simon, who helps the show carefully transition from scenes interacting with the crowd to dialogue between two characters, and even creating tenderness with subtle warm lighting throughout the show.
What’s new about Shakespeare 70’s adaptation was the choice of adding both classical and contemporary music to a play which previously had none. Falisi said the music served as an additional reminder “that we fight and we organize so we can have pleasurable lives, and so we can have romance.”
The performers taught choruses to the audience to sing together, and even handed out printouts for the production’s grand finale.
What isn’t new is the play’s subject matter with commentary on social classes and wealth inequality, along with its extremely honest performances resembling real life. It’s all a testament to how well this play has aged almost a century later, and shows how especially concise it is for tackling all of this in just an hour.
“This is a play that has real class analysis in it, and we wanted to get that on campus… All the union stuff, all the political stuff in the play still works,” said Fallisi on putting on “Waiting for Lefty.”
This performance drew in friends, family, students and theater lovers alike, bringing a unique, artistic and professional experience you don’t find on campus too often.
