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Waiting for Lefty (and Scenes from Other Great Odets Plays)

Reviewed by Lovell Estell III

Hero Theatre Company at Inner City Arts

Through Feb. 1

RECOMMENDED:

Director Korey Jackson and the Hero Theatre Company’s plain-sailing revival of Clifford Odets’s Depression-era drama about conflict among NYC cabbies and and their labor union proves that some things haven’t changed at all since 1935.

Prefacing the performance, Korey includes scenes from three other Odets dramas, all superbly done:  Golden Boy (1937), Awake & Sing (1935), and Paradise Lost (1935), featuring the rapturous violin playing of Tylana Enomoto Renga.

To strike or not to strike: That is the issue at the heart of Waiting for Lefty, which takes place inside a union hall in New York, where a gathering of enraged, impecunious cabbies is deciding whether to take to the streets.  With this as a backdrop, the narrative winds through a series of vignettes that offer an intimate perspective on the suffering of the era: a cab driver (Charlie Hofheimer) who can’t feed his family and his desperate wife (Elisa Bocanegra), a lab assistant (Nick Caballero) who refuses to sell out, a young, idealistic doctor (Hofheimer) confronted with the realities of race and class by an older colleague (Robin Gammell) who’s too tired and beholden to the powers-that-be to stand up for what’s right. Perhaps the enduring appeal of this play derives from the simple, gritty quality of its characters, who certainly would not be out of place in today’s strife-torn society.  The ensemble’s performance is energetic and convincing.  

Hero Theatre Company at Inner-City Arts, 720 Kohler St., dwntwn.; Fri.-Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 1 p.m.; through Feb. 1. www.HEROtheatre.org