Lynn Nottage’s play ‘Sweat’ timely drama

Drabinsky comeback musical

Following an Off Broadway run at the Public Theater last fall, “Sweat” opened on Broadway March 26. The cast was largely the same, with the exception of new addition Alison Wright taking the place of Miriam Shor. Printed below is an edited version of Marilyn Stasio’s review of the Off Broadway production, which ran in Variety Nov 3.

In “Sweat,” Lynn Nottage goes where few playwrights have dared to go — into the heart of workingclass America. Her insightfully observed characters all went to the same schools, work at the same factory, eat at the same restaurant, and are going to hell in the same hand basket. Their jobs, their community, and their way of life are doomed, in director Kate Whoriskey’s mercilessly realistic production, although no one seems to have gotten the message yet.

The entire play takes place on John Lee Beatty’s splendid set of an old neighborhood bar in Reading, Penn., a second home for everyone who works in the factory in this factory town. Stan (a reliable James Colby) owns the place. Tracey, Cynthia, and Jessie, friends who work the line together as their families did for three generations, are his best customers.

Tracey (Joanna Day, really committed to the role) talks tough, but seems content to work on the line for the rest of her life, provided she gets regular pay raises and the union continues to protect her benefits. Jessie (played on Broadway by Alison Wright) has no ambitions outside of getting wasted at the end of the week. Only Cynthia (a smart performance from Michelle Wilson) sees her factory job as a way to professional advancement. She applies for a supervisor job and gets it, without realizing the wedge it will create between her and her friends on the line.

Nottage

By Marilyn Stasio

Layoffs

None of them, however — not even Cynthia — thinks of looking beyond their day-to-day jobs. That soothsayer role falls to Stan, who reads both the newspapers and the writing on the wall. He’s heard rumors of layoffs and closings at other plants, and tries to alert his bar patrons. “You could wake up tomorrow and all your jobs are in Mexico,” he warns them.

“They got buttons now that can replace all of us,” someone finally realizes.

Nottage wrote “Sweat” after extensive interviews with people in Reading, which accounts for the solid character work and stretches of realistic dialogue. The plot is less successful for trying to cover every conceivable labor issue, from the failure of collective bargaining and the ultimate collapse of the trade unions to the toll on company towns when the local factory, coal mine or steel mill goes under. But credit the writer for giving many forgotten Americans a voice.

At Stan’s, the regulars are quick to dismiss the foreboding warnings as management gossip to keep everyone on edge — despite unmistakable signs that some of their neighbors are already cracking under the stress of shortened hours and cutbacks on the factory line. There’s a lot of drug dependency. One poor guy burns down his own house. But not even a costly and fruitless strike by their union can get through to some people.

Garth Drabinsky may have to wait a while longer before redeeming himself with patrons and colleagues. The infamous producer’s supposed comeback after his conviction of fraud and forgery in 2009, “Sousatzka” assembles an impressive amount of talent but ends up overwhelmed by plot lines, disparate music styles and dated racial representations. The story of an esteemed piano teacher and the prodigy pupil who escaped from apartheid-era South Africa with his activist mother, the musical is currently tageting a Broadway transfer this fall. But this trial run in Toronto, where the show opened March 23, raises serious concern about its viability.

From the start, “Sousatzka” caught the theater industry’s attention for a few reasons. First, there was the unconventional title, named after its source material — the little-known 1962 novel by Bernice Rubens, “Madame Sousatzka.” There was also its star, Tony Award-winner Victoria Clark (“The Light in the Piazza,” “Gigi,” “Cinderella,” “Sister Act”) taking the title role. The composer and lyricist team of Richard Maltby Jr. and David Shire added to the buzz, as did the timely subject matter of political refugees, trauma and belonging.

But the biggest attention-getter was the mastermind behind it all, former Livent CEO Drabinksy, who conceived of the musical adaptation, continued working on it while serving 17 months in prison, attended every rehearsal and weighed in on all major artistic decisions. Speculation about his potential return to Broadway — after memorable shows like “Kiss of a Spider Woman,” “Ragtime,” and “Sunset Boulevard” — accompanied “Sousatzka” throughout its creation.

In its Toronto debut, however, “Sousatzka” is at best an over-produced, overly-complicated combination of plot, genres, technical elements and emotional tone. At worst, it’s an offensive and tone-deaf portrayal of South African politics and people, and so emotionally manipulative that feels as if it’s decades behind the times.

Luckily, when the content falters, the material is carried forward by the raw talent of its 47 performers — specifically the captivating Clark as Sousatzka, a Holocaust-haunted woman who never reached her full potential as a musician and now clings to her students for meaning; and Montego Glover (“Memphis”), giving a powerful performance as Xholiswa Khenketha, a former anti-apartheid activist and the mother of a gifted piano prodigy she’s worried will become assimilated into London culture. The cast’s energy and dedication to lift up the production through sheer force of will and talent is what earned a standing ovation on opening night.

Packing a novel’s worth of action into a musical, even one that’s two and a half hours plus an intermission, is a tricky task. The story of “Sousatzka” spans Soweto during apartheid, Warsaw during the Holocaust and 1980’s London — and such a wide scope means that all of these periods get surface-level treatment and melodramatic stereotypes.

A flashback in which young Sousatzka (Eryn LeCroy) is raped feels particularly gratuitous, but it’s the musical’s depiction of its South African characters that is unignorably flawed. Though South African composer Lebo M (known for his work on “The Lion King”) contributes some of the best music in “Sousatzka,” it comes off as an afterthought to the Maltby and Shire score, which drives the story forward mostly through uninspiring ballads and arbitrary comedic songs, including the inexplicable trip that piano prodigy Themba (Jordan Barrow) takes with his new friend Jenny (Sara Jean Ford) to a downtown London nightclub. (RTRS)