"Waiting for Lefty" is a labor-movement history lesson

The first thing you notice in Capitol Hill Arts Center's production of "Waiting for Lefty" is the guy in a brown suit and felt hat lying on the floor of the theater, a tin cup by his side.

A symbol of the destitute and homeless multitudes caught in America's Great Depression, the man remains still and silent as the audience files in around him.

But he's the last static image you'll see in CHAC's high-voltage version of this 1935 message play, which shakes off much of its historic must in the propulsion and intensity of Sheila Daniels' staging.

From its crouching male procession to a bitter chorale of "Buddy, Can You Spare a Dime?" to its finale of downtrodden New York cabbies raising their fists and shouting, "Strike!," the show pulls you in by the lapels. And there you are, right in the furnace of anger, idealism and resistance where "Waiting for Lefty" was forged by Odets and the Group Theatre, during the nation's worst economic crisis ever.

Yes, Odets' pamphleteering script contains glaring anachronisms. A collection of sketches that peel off and feed into an explosive cab drivers' union meeting, this is theater-as-megaphone. With no apology, it expresses the rage Odets, his peers and many others felt about the corruption and inequity of the American capitalistic system in the 1930s, and their desperate determination to revolt against it.

What still gives "Waiting for Lefty" theatrical force, however, is Odets' punchy, New York-ese dialogue, and his gift for translating political convictions into compelling mini-melodramas.

Edna, a haggard young mother and wife (fiercely played by Jená Cane), is so angry that her cabbie husband, Joe (Peter Dylan O'Connor)has to drive long shifts for paltry wages while their children starve, she browbeats and bullies him into calling for a strike. ("The world was supposed to be for all of us!")

In more bluntly didactic encounters, an impoverished actor (Garlyn Punao) gets the brush-off from a Broadway theater producer (John Farrage, who also plays a thuggish union boss) — and an expression of worker solidarity (and free copy of the Communist manifesto) from the bigwig's secretary (Laurie Johnson).

And a young Jewish doctor (Aimee Bruneau) confronts the twin evils of anti-Semitism and nepotism in the hospital workplace, as her ashamed superior (James Winkler) admits: "Doctors don't run medicine here."

If that statement is applicable to our own time (and health system), it's not the only line that has some modern sting. But much of "Waiting for Lefty" is best understood in historical context — a context in which U.S. workers had no "safety net" to protect them from dire poverty, and no realization Communism could also be corrupted, or that World War II wouldn't only be a bonanza for arms dealers but also an imperative struggle against fascism and genocide.

CHAC's production, however, never backs away from or glosses the script's raw edges. And Daniels, in some of her best work to date, gives the show a cinematic vitality by setting a tempo that rarely flags, threading emblematic '30s protest and pop tunes throughout the action and drawing impassioned work from an uneven but highly committed acting ensemble.

Clearly, this is a group effort, with key contributions also from music director and arranger John Osebold, lighting designer Patti West and costumer K.D. Schill. All deserve a salute.

Misha Berson: mberson@seattletimes.com