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October 1-26, 2008
Make your reservations NOW by calling the box office
at (916) 691-7364 or go to seeaplay.com to order tickets. |
| Waiting for Lefty’s original production in 1935 was a critical success and a popular hit. Reviewing it for the New York Times, Brooks Atkinson praised it as not only “one of the best working-class dramas that have been written” but as “one of the most dynamic dramas of the year in any department of our theatre.” He stressed its realism and intensity: “the characters are right off the city pavements; the emotions are tender and raw, and some of them are bitter.” A passionate labor play, it’s been 62 years since the theater goers hailed Waiting for Lefty as the first important labor play. |
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The story takes place in a meeting hall in 1935 New York City where the delegates for a taxi driver's union tensely debate whether to authorize a strike by their membership, something their leaders definitely do not want to happen. The denouement evolves through a series of flashback episodes dramatizing what brought the various delegates to this time and place in their lives. For example we see how Joe became one of the most vocal advocates at the meeting. Originally afraid to jeopardize the little money he's able to earn -about $8.00 dollars a week -he's been shamed by his wife Edna into taking a stand. The long and all-inclusive reach of poverty and want pervades every episode. A once successful doctor lost his job because he's Jewish. |
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| Harold Clurman, a founder of the Group Theatre, recalled of an early performance that the audience joined spontaneously and enthusiastically in the climactic call to “Strike! Strike!” As he recalled in The Fervent Years: The Story of the Group Theatre and the Thirties, Clurman considered their reaction both “a tribute to the play’s effectiveness” and “a testimony of the audience’s hunger for constructive social action. It was the birth cry of the thirties. Our youth had found its voice.” By July of 1935 (within six months of its debut), Waiting for Lefty had been produced in thirty cities across the country. For several years, productions of the play were staged as fundraisers and morale boosters by a variety of worker’s organizations. |
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Waiting for Lefty will be directed by Frank Condon.
Previews begin Wednesday, October 1. Tickets for previews are $7 general admission and $5 for seniors, students and Los Rios employees. Waiting for Lefty opens Saturday, October 4, and plays Thursday through Saturday evenings at 8 pm ($18 general admission, $15 seniors, students and Los Rios employees), and Sundays at 2 pm (all tickets $15). Waiting for Lefty closes October 26. |
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October 1-26, 2008
Make your reservations NOW by calling the box office
at (916) 691-7364 or go to seeaplay.com to order tickets. |
