Sweat is a strong, socially conscious play about the impact ruthless 21st-century capitalism has on the working class. Lynn Nottage’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play is set in Reading, PA., a once-thriving city packed with textile and auto-parts plants which gave tens of thousands of unionized employees well-paying jobs with benefits. Sweat looks at what happened to those workers when their bosses decided to quit manufacturing in the USA and set up shop in cheap-labor, “right-to-work” countries like Mexico. No provision was made to retrain the American workers or protect their pensions. They were simply dumped out on the street, left to survive as best they could.
The play focuses on seven Reading workers in the years 2000 and 2008 who are caught up in the class war that has devastated so much of America. We meet them (and their children) in a bar run by an ex-worker named Stan (Michael O’Keefe) and his Latino helper Oscar (Peter Mendoza). Three of the seven are women who have worked long, hard years on the line, proudly putting their blood and sweat into their labors. Prominent among them is Cynthia (Portia), an African-American with a troubled husband, Brucie (John Earl Jelks), and a bright son Chris (Grantham Coleman). Cynthia has a chance to slightly better herself (and help her family) by becoming a shop steward. The job just about proves to be her undoing, because when it finally dawns on her longtime friends, Tracey (Mary Mara) and Jessie (Amy Pietz), that their bosses are going to pull the plug on the factory, they turn on her and blame her for not using her inside knowledge to warn and protect them. Their arguments soon turn violent and horrific. Here is where Sweat resembles the play Skeleton Crew which was seen earlier this year at the Geffen. In that drama by Dominique Morisseau, the workers of a Detroit auto factory who are about to be tossed on the scrap heap take their anger and resentment out on one of their own, an African-American who has transitioned to management and must walk the thin line between workers and bosses. Sweat repeats that conflict, though it goes on to tell a much bigger, more complex story than the other play, one which also dramatizes the fate of the youngsters, Chris and Jason, whose lives are also blighted by the death of the American Dream in Reading (40% of whose 88,000 residents are still living in poverty). Sweat is a dark, angry play—a protest play, really—but it is not all doom and gloom. The three main gals are a bawdy, wise-cracking, salt-of-the-earth bunch, especially Tracey, a blonde, hard-drinking, cigarette-puffing gal with a ballsy personality. Tough and hip as she is, though, she is ultimately done in by the social forces that eventually crush them all. This powerful and prescient story might have been even more effective had it been cut some; several scenes, particularly ones in which the trio lashes out at the beleaguered Cynthia, repeat themselves, and the jumping back in forth in time also lessens impact. What shines through, though, is Nottage’s fiery dialogue, the superb acting of the ensemble cast, and Lisa Peterson’s incisive direction. Yee Eun Nam’s kaleidoscopic projection design also gives the play a vivid backdrop. After this L.A. run, Sweat will embark on a free month-long run through 18 cities.
