Waiting for Lefty and Other Plays

Rating:
Summary: AWAKE AND SING
Review: After joining the American Communist Party in 1934, Odets used a taxi drivers' strike from that year as the inspiration for his first play, Waiting for Lefty . The play is an agit-prop that borrows heavily from Communist ideology and promotes collective action and unionization as the only means to tip the scales of power away from big business and toward the worker. The characters in the play grow aware of themselves as the oppressed class as opposed to the powerful ruling class, and when this "class consciousness" becomes too burdensome, they see no other option but to strike.
This dialectic play gives the audience an insight into the ills of American society and encourages them to change their reality. It was written and performed at a time when the legend of the self-made man held no more waters. The country was still struggling with the aftershocks of the stock market crash of 1929. Unemployment rate reached its highest peak in the United States and employers were reducing wages drastically. As depicted in John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath (1939) and Tillie Olsen's Yonnondio: From the Thirties (written in the 1930s, published in 1974), workers were treated brutally by their employers. As Steinbeck showed, workers had to bond together and fight for their meagre wages which dropped even more because of the intense competition. In this fight, unionization and strikes were their only weapons.

Rating:
Summary: So quirky and original!
Review: I loved reading Waiting For Lefty. I tried to liken it to another play or playwright, but I can't compare it to Tennessee Williams, Neil Simon, or even Moilere! I think the best way to get a taste for it is to get it for yourself. It's definitely worth your time!

Rating:
Summary: So quirky and original!
Review: I loved reading Waiting For Lefty. I tried to liken it to another play or playwright, but I can't compare it to Tennessee Williams, Neil Simon, or even Moilere! I think the best way to get a taste for it is to get it for yourself. It's definitely worth your time!

Rating:
Summary: A fine representation of seminal American Drama
Review: There are many aspects of Odets' work that have not particularly aged well. Frankly because he consciously was writing to reflect contemporary (for the 1930's) American Society with an extreme and blatant Leftist leaning, much of his dialouge, characterization and politicising has dated. Yet these selections still contain powerful dramatic representations of life that illuminate a segment of society that literally was ignored by the media of the time.

It is arguable, but I think it's true that without Odets' dramatization of the plight of the common man, we wouldn't have witnessed the (admittidly more poetic and timeless) works of Miller, Inge and Williams. Odets, perhaps more than any other playwright of his time, placed "the little guy" in the center of the tragic form. As one reads these plays, one becomes aware that the rules are beginning to break right before the reader's eyes.

Odets' plays are, if one is able to check their political hat at the door, fine works of dramtic lit that prove most actable while also allowing a range of staging possibilities. His narratives are clean and direct in the sense that they give the characters a series of clear objectives and actions as well as conflicts to confront. This collection is a most welcome and necessary addition to any theatre library.