A still young but incipiently arthritic assembly-line-toiler (Tracie Thoms) concedes she’ll be doing the job for the rest of the morning and the afternoon and for the rest of her life. She makes the claim in Working: A Musical, which Stephen Schwartz and Nina Faso adapted from Studs Terkel’s 1974 Working, a compilation of interviews with the average Joe and Jane about their wage earning lives.
During most of the other songs in the hot-hot-hot New York City Center Encores! Off-Center summer series revival, the salaried people heard from all but revel at their posts as they describe them in songs by Schwartz, along with composers and lyricists Craig Carnelia (the first among equals), James Taylor, Micki Grant, Susan Birkenhead, and Mary Rodgers. An additional two numbers, recently added to the production, are by Lin-Manuel (Hamilton) Miranda and were also part of a London Working revival a couple of summers ago.
[Read Melissa Rose Bernardo’s ★★★★ review here.]
The most joyful paean to a 9-to-5 (or thereabouts) slot is Schwartz’s “It’s an Art,” given a superb performance by the always jubilant Andréa Burns as a waitress who, when wielding her serving tray, regards herself as just this side of royalty. Others happy as clams at what they do daily include Mateo Ferro, who in Miranda’s “Delivery” is most gratified when receiving tips. In “The Mason” Christopher Jackson gladly adds one stone to the previous one and then another. The entire cast chimes in on Carnelia’s “Something to Point To,” which extols the working hero’s ability to claim concrete (sometimes literal concrete) results of their daily duties. David Garrison can’t or won’t complain in “Brother Trucker” about his exploits.
(Incidentally, in this entry Schwartz contrives to rhyme “brother trucker” with “motherfucker.” At least I’m convinced he does, and that has to be a first.)
OK, not all the reminiscences are out-and-out love affairs with jobs. As a teacher facing changes in schoolroom expectations, Helen Hunt confesses uncertainty with “Nobody Tells Me How.” (Yes, it’s that Helen Hunt, the Oscar- and Emmy-winning Helen Hunt, who does have a very slight pitch challenge.) Garrison puts a good face on a retirement routine in “Joe,” while Javier Muñoz and Andréa Burns are grateful in Miranda’s “A Very Good Day, concerning immigrants biding time and sending money to families who have yet to immigrate. Needless to point out, the threnody is extremely resonant in 2019.
In the intermissionless 90 minutes that Working entertainingly takes up (the 1978 version was in two acts), director Anne Kauffman does her own work with the kind of effortless effort that some but not all workers (depending on the kind of demands put on them) are able to achieve. With costumer Clint Ramos, set designer Donyale Werle, lighting designer Mark Barton, sound designer Leon Rothenberg, music director Alvin Hough, Jr., and orchestrators Alex Lacamoire and Bruce Coughlin, Kauffman makes no mistakes.
Avihai Haham, who’s new to this reviewer, enhances the proceedings with some startling choreography, executed by Daniel Ching, Tilly Evans Krueger, Tessa Grady, and Malik Shabazz Kitchen. The four perform as if they’re break dancers who just happen to walk in from the street and decide to resume their break dancing on the spot. They’re so good that there are moments when the audience may be tempted to watch them rather than listen to what’s being crooned.
And now to some serious consideration of this look back at the property that is Working, which ran for 12 previews and 24 performances in 1978. Sure, the outing is intended as a revival, or should be according to the Encores! Off Center mandate.
Truth be told, however, this Working is much more a revisal than a revival. Certainly, others in the 26 Encores! series years have undergone alterations to some extent or other, but none, it seems, quite so radical as this one.
To begin with—when a supposed City Center lighting designer audibly calls cues for dimming house lights—the very City Center itself becomes a character. Cast members introduce themselves as City Center staff members, some of them second generation members. Yup, nepotism in hiring, as a given in theater personnel, is subtly invoked. Even Werle’s economical set is a stylized, black-and-white representation of the City Center façade designed by Harry P. Knowles and the Clinton and Russell firm as the Mecca Temple.
Throughout there are contemporary references—computers, cellphones, jobs that didn’t exist then. So whether though Schwartz and colleagues mean to incorporate these alterations in future productions isn’t indicated anywhere, you can bet on it and be a winner that those associated with the five-day run are thinking about the unfair initial Broadway stay, with this treatment representing a compensatory pre-Broadway (or pre-anywhere) try-out.
After all, the great Chicago-based Terkel set out to give work and workers their overdue due. He wanted to imbue work and workers with a sense of pride. Some might say that he smoothed off a few edges, but why not? Working adds music and lyrics to Terkel’s Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do. As freshly minted, the hard-working tuner deserves to spread the encouraging word as widely as possible.
Working: A Musical opened June 26, 2019, at City Center and runs through June 29. Tickets and information: nycitycenter.org
