Intiman Theatre dusts off Depression-era 'Paradise Lost' — which speaks powerfully to us now

Can depictions of families in the Great Depression era help us come to terms with our Great Recession?

Theater companies are hoping so, as they unearth plays from the past that could speak to today.

This week Intiman Theatre opens its 2010 season with a rare local take on the 1935 Clifford Odets drama "Paradise Lost." Set in 1932, the play centers on two prosperous New York families who jointly own a handbag factory, and their closest friends.

It is the depths of the Depression, but the Gordon, Katz and Michaels clans are holding their own. Gradually, however, the parents and adult children spiral into financial ruin — which they're ill-equipped, emotionally and otherwise, to deal with.

In its Broadway debut by the fabled left-wing ensemble The Group Theatre, "Paradise Lost" was not a success. And apart from a 1974 made-for-TV-movie of the work, it gathered dust.

Until now. Intiman is one of several prominent theaters to embrace the piece. (It was also staged at Oregon Shakespeare Festival least year, and at American Repertory Theatre in Cambridge, Mass., last month.)

"This is the right time to be doing 'Paradise Lost,' " says Dámaso Rodriguez, director of Intiman's production, and head of L.A.'s Furious Theatre Company. "It's haunting to hear Odets' characters talk about trying to get home loans, about going bankrupt. This is socially relevant, visceral work."

The shock of recognition is tempered somewhat by the contrasts between the stark poverty many families faced in the 1930s and what struggling middle-class Americans are coping with today.

In 1932, nearly 25 percent of the adult U.S. population was unemployed. The latest government jobless figure for 2010 is 9.7 percent.

And before President Franklin Roosevelt began weaving a social "safety net" for the nation, millions tumbled into financial free fall — with no unemployment benefits, food stamps or social-security checks to cushion the descent.

There are also psychological contrasts. The 1930s crash was the worst in U.S. history and deeply demoralizing. Rising fascism in Europe made it scarier. Says Rodriguez, "It was more apocalyptic. People actually felt the world was falling apart, that the country might not survive."

But there are commonalities between the two eras as well. One example: both hit the middle class hard, as well as the lower classes.

"You think Depression and you think poor," suggests Rodriguez. "But the key to 'Paradise Lost' is that these people had financially achieved, attained and ultimately overreached. That's what's going on now."

Yet why dust off a 75-year-old drama to portray the phenomenon, rather than turn to a new play about the contemporary scene?

Partly because the latter is more easily said than done. So far, a cluster of novels has appeared, but no high-profile stage plays or movies that chart the impact of the Great Recession — particularly on well-educated, white-collar workers, whose livelihoods have collapsed.

The fact is, when times are tough, escapism sells. It's unsurprising many of us would rather get lost in a 3-D fantasy-action flick, or a frothy Broadway musical, than a kitchen-table tragedy (albeit one with a happy ending) — and producers know it.

"The entertainment industry has become extremely risk-adverse," claims Rodriguez. "They just don't see wrestling with these issues as entertainment."

Another reason we aren't seeing more recession-aware plays yet, contends University of Washington labor studies professor James Gregory, is that our news media isn't attuned to the true, day-to-day travails of ordinary Americans.

Gregory contends that while many news outlets list unemployment statistics, "those are just flat, abstract numbers. We get few in-depth stories about what families struggle with. In our state, about 400,000 people are without jobs. Their voices are not being heard."

And why aren't modern writers channeling those voices? Author and UW drama Professor Emeritus Barry Witham, an expert on 1930s theater, posits that today's playwrights aren't as politically engaged and fervent as Odets (a Marxist in his youth) and many of his peers (i.e., Elmer Rice, Sidney Kingsley) were.

Their plays were vehicles to urgently debate how to repair a crushed nation. "They dealt with ideas," says Witham. "We're not dealing with ideas right now. Our playwrights don't have that single agenda they had — 'If we don't save this country, we're going to lose it.' "

"Paradise Lost" was one of three Odets plays to debut in 1935 and passionately address that question. All were produced by the Group, of which Odets (age 29 in 1935) was a valued member. And each viewed the ravages of the Great Depression from different rungs on the social ladder.

First came "Waiting for Lefty," a raw, dynamic one-act about a New York cabbie strike. (It had a staged reading in UW's The Great Depression in Washington State project in February).

Next came "Awake and Sing!," the colorful account of a working-class, New York Jewish clan in hard times. (It was revived to acclaim on Broadway recently, under Intiman's former artistic head Bartlett Sher's direction.)

The capper was "Paradise Lost," which Group co-founder Harold Clurman later called "a search for reality" by the "little people of the small middle-class world [who] were fumbling about in an environment they didn't control or understand ... "

Some key New York critics who raved about Odets' earlier works registered their disappointment over this "Chekhovian interlude" by the ambitious young firebrand. The play lasted only two months on Broadway.

In one of those unexpected literary turnabouts, "Paradise Lost" is drawing better notices now than in its premiere. And despite the long-standing critique that it was too big (with 24 characters), too busy, too self-consciously poetic, directors like Rodriguez are embracing those very qualities. (At Intiman, a cast of 14 covers all the roles.)

But when will we get our own Great Recession classic? Stick around. Gregory notes that during the Great Depression, "It took quite a while for Broadway and Hollywood to come around to telling stories of people who were losing everything.

"I think theaters today are a little ahead of their predecessors of 70 years ago, in that they're doing a lot of '30s plays. It's not fresh material, but it lets the past speak to the present."

"These are plays that mattered, when theater mattered," says Witham. "Theater is one way that we manufacture ideologies and articulate American values."

Those values are in flux, as they often are at dramatic historical junctures. And the nonprofit-theater world, though caught up in its own cash crunch, can still be a place to ponder human behavior, in light of what's essential to our society.

Says Gregory, "It can be instructive to see the suffering Americans endured in the 1930s, as we re-evalute our personal and national priorities. And theater can give us empathy for those who are struggling more than we are. We need more of that, to pull together as a society and move in a better direction."

Misha Berson: mberson@seattletimes.com