(It’s Been 76 Years and We’re) Still Waiting for Lefty

It is admirable of Crafts, seeking to fan the flame for social justice that once burned like a conflagration in this nation and is now barely a spark from an over-flicked Bic.
However this effort should have begun and ended as a writer’s exercise.

Go see this play! There is so much here to unpack in a great way. Every character had a dilemma and was truly 3 dimensional. There are no clear “protagonists” and “villains” — every character had a well thought out set of reasons to have their opinion. So much energy and strong characters in just 80 minutes

As my lovely Jane said, there was a fair and nuanced portrayal of every character.

For example, the “Trump voter” was not automatically demonized and had clear motivations that made sense…until he was challenged in his belief. The LGBT+ person was not the automatic “hero/heroine” — in fact, her true, extreme fear of COVID made her a little unsympathetic and drove even her girlfriend crazy.

The opening was very clever pulling in the original “Waiting for Lefty” and introducing it to the audience in a very modern way.

The play had a clear point of view around the effect of social media as multiple characters with wildly different opinions talked about how they found their information on Twitter….and of course it MUST be true.

The audio/visual elements were smart and added a lot to the performance.

Fantastic performances!

Crafts has written some pointed plot points and his talented cast, under the assured direction of Richard Platt, deliver them without really chewing the scenery or pounding their chests overly hard.

This show speaks directly to the woes of current society, be it at home, in the workplace, online, because of the pandemic, lack of good jobs or fair housing, in the news, believing everything you read online, or due to discrimination in all its forms. In each of the scenes, it becomes apparent that everyone is waiting for someone else to fix the problem, and while we all can see them and comment on them, nothing is getting done because we are still “waiting for Lefty” to do something about it. Problem is, Lefty isn’t coming. In fact, there probably isn’t anyone named Lefty. So while Tik Tok and Instagram offer quick and fun entertainment, often addressing problems to be fixed, how will anything really get done if we continually wait for someone else? Politicians don’t know, that’s for sure. I guess the message I really took away from this show was that the more things change, the more they stay the same. So let’s just get up and dance. And how can we keep living this way? How? And yet, we do. Must history always keep repeating itself?

The visual presentation was stunning with cast members often moving and freezing in artistic formation in profile against a bright background. And the more that was said, the more relevant the play became to today’s overly depressing and hopeless state of the world. But then, that is the real purpose of art, to address society around us and hope to change things for the better by opening up a window of recognition. Be sure to read the graphics on the wall during the last scene as they send home a message of hope to those wiling to take steps to make things better rather than waiting around for someone else to do it for us.

All the pieces worked well together, although on occasion it was a bit difficult to understand some of the dialogue during the virtual presentation. It was have been great to have the words of the songs broadcast as I am sure more laughter would have been generated due to the subject matter going by so fast that is was easy to miss the meaning.