Theatre Horizon's "Working'

Resentment in the workplace, updated

STEVE COHEN

This summer’s production by the up-and-coming company Theatre Horizon was Working. And it did work. This production made changes that helped make the musical more involving than usual.

Working is a problematic show. It’s based on interviews that the oral historian Studs Terkel fashioned into a book in 1972, subtitled, People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do. When composer Stephen Schwartz set it to music in 1978 it enjoyed modest success on Broadway but became a perennial in community theater.

One of its appealing aspects is also one of its problems. Schwartz wrote only a few of its songs, adapting the words of Terkel’s interviewees. He asked some of his talented friends– Mary Rodgers, James Taylor and Craig Carnelia among them– to contribute songs as well. Because of the disparate writers, the show lacks an overall musical shape. The variety of approaches can be justified, perhaps, by the fact that the subjects come from disparate backgrounds. But Schwartz and his songwriter pals missed the chance to show the common thread that binds these working men and women, and to create musical links.

You can’t put it down

Terkel organized his interviews by theme into nine chapters. The musical doesn’t. Some books have been turned into musicals that transcend their sources: Show Boat, South Pacific, How to Succeed in Business, etc. But Terkel’s classic book is more fulfilling and more powerful than the musical show.

One advantage of Terkel’s format is that you can pick up the book, read a section, then put it down. In this two-act musical we must take the stories whole, in the order in which Schwartz arranged them.

This new production, directed by Matthew Decker, took its cue from Terkel’s original idea and incorporated new video interviews with working people from Philadelphia’s northern and western suburbs, near where the theater company makes its home. These documentary visuals are interspersed between songs, and they made the show relevant and personal.

2008 vs. 1972

The stories of these local people in 2008 and Terkel’s subjects from 1972 are strikingly similar. Sadly, little seems to have changed in the workplace. The characters often have a sense of meaninglessness, and sometimes they’re angry.

Singing about their jobs, their families and their hopes are a schoolteacher, parking lot attendant, office worker, waitress, trucker, fireman, housewife and more. Decker’s re-imagined production pared down the cast to a handful of versatile actors who became storytellers for each of the 26 workers in the play.

The production featured Ade Laoye, Rachel Camp, Steven Wright, Joe Mallon and artistic director Erin Reilly, who provided one of the highlights when she sang "It’s an Art" to be a waitress.