Depression plays beautiful

The work of Clifford Odets, one of the most esteemed and controversial playwrights in America in the 20th century, was brought to life this weekend at the John Waldron Arts Center, 122 S. Walnut St., by actors from Bloomington High Schools North and South. \nThe production will continue Feb. 23-25.\nOdets produced a unique kind of drama that is emotionally complex and stunningly realistic. At no point does one feel detached from the events unfolding onstage. Of course, this has as much to do with the ability of actors to generate and sustain pathos as with the quality of Odets' writing.\nNo small task for student thespians, who are rarely entrusted with this level of depth and weighty subject matter. The group of actors onstage Friday at the Waldron seemed to relish tearing down the notion that high school is the place for splashy, feel-good Broadway warhorses but not the more serious side of theater. They proved Odets' proletariat vision was in capable hands.\n"Waiting For Lefty," written in 1935 on the heels of the worst part of the Depression, deals with the struggles of the working class in an era before the advent of organized labor. Lower-class shop employees faced strong-arm tactics from their bosses and the prospect of scraping a living out of $16 a week. \nDirected by Francesca Sobrer, the play is structured as a series of scenes from the everyday lives of these workers. They are snapshot views into lives plagued by powerlessness, indecision and depleted self-worth. Book-ending these are scenes of disenfranchised laborers sowing the seeds of discontent at a union hall, which have a unifying effect: all of this action is happening simultaneously, or close to it, giving the audience a broad overview of a social epidemic.\nIn his part as a factory boss, Adam Nahas of Bloomington High School South injected just enough humanity to keep his menacing character from becoming a cartoonish bully. Most of the actors in "Lefty" avoided the pitfall of playing Odets' "everyman" characters too broadly but retaining the intensity that draws an audience in. Life is dramatic enough; Odets drives that fact home by focusing with laser-like accuracy on the day-to-day struggles of these realistic characters that shouldn't need overacting. The message comes through loud and clear on its own.\nEqually engaging were Carl Estes, from Bloomington High School North, and Nicole Bruce, from Bloomington High School South, as a young couple trying to make ends meet on his meager salary. Their impassioned performance was believable. \nBut one improvement most of the evening's cast could make is better speech clarity. Even in a small theater like the Waldron, normal speech patterns become hard to decipher.\nThe other offering by Odets, "Awake and Sing," proved to be the better of the two plays, not necessarily in terms of performance, but by virtue of its depth and substance. A full-length work, it shows Odets to be a masterful handler of complex personal issues, and brings to mind other family dramatists, such as Tennessee Williams and Woody Allen, who produced such films as "Interiors" and "September."\nThe small ensemble did a wonderful job of behaving like a credible family. Even on opening night they seemed to have developed a rapport that made it easy for them to play off one another. Pacing rarely lagged, and bolstering the sense of reality was a brilliant bit of casting by director Catharine Rademacher. No one seemed better suited for a different part.\nBloomington High School North student Alia Radman delivered a fine, multi-dimensional performance as Bessie Berger, the oppressive matriarch of an extended Jewish family living in the Bronx. At times vicious, smotheringly protective or sympathetic, she portrayed Berger with a penetrating understanding of what makes her character tick and how her motives contribute to the emotional power of the play. \nMost of the scarce comic relief was provided by her slow-witted husband, Myron, played by Bloomington High School South student Corey Jefferson, who has been reduced to a spineless ghost but who shows one or two glimmers of insight throughout the play.\nThe plot involves Berger's young-adult children and their efforts to strike out on their own despite her oppression and their grim economic situation. Her son, Ralph, longs to be united with his love, a "disgraceful" orphan girl, from whom he is in danger of being separated. The fact that she never appears in the play (like the title character of "Lefty") gives her the elusive quality of a dream that might never be pulled into reality. Berger's daughter, Hennie, grapples with raising an illegitimate child and handling a prearranged marriage. The roles were played admirably by Bloomington High School North students Ronnie Hamrick and Rebecca Giordano. \n"Awake and Sing" is an artful example of great American theater, and the Waldron's production did the play abundant justice. From the claustrophobic one room set to small details that enhanced its subtle strength (such as a prop newspaper that declared "Love always wins"), it was apparent that Odets' intentions were followed, with beautiful and moving results.