Working
Working, Studs Terkel's remarkable collection of interviews (1974), is an oral report on the American worker. Stephen Schwartz and Nina Faso's musical based on the book premiered in 1978. The show closed in less than a month. Schwartz is remaking the original at the Old Globe. The emphasis is less on what workers have to say than on innocuous entertainment, as if they're performing before their bosses. The six-person cast is backed by a giant tic-tac-toe set: nine boxes, three rows each, joined by steel girders, dwarf the performers. Marie-France Arcilla's "Millworker," about doing the same routine every 40 seconds, caught the grind of the job ("my body is a tool"), though the other actors, blandly miming the movements, could put their backs into them more. Danielle Lee Greaves's "Just a Housewife" and "Cleanin' Woman" enrich the evening. Newer bits, like Charlie Blossom, misfire. The remake needs reworking: roll up its sleeves, and be unafraid to get its hands dirty.
When
Ongoing until Sunday, April 26, 2009
Hours
| Sundays, 2pm & 7pm |
| Tuesdays, 7pm |
| Wednesdays, 7pm |
| Thursdays, 8pm |
| Fridays, 8pm |
| Saturdays, 2pm & 8pm |