Sweat, by Lynn Nottage. Philadelphia Theatre Company, October 2018.
Lynn Nottage’s play comes bearing decorations from award committees. Thus it seemed like a great choice to re-open the Philadelphia Theatre Company after a year of retooling under its new artistic director, Paige Price.
Prestigious awards frequently are based on the gravity of the subject matter. That’s certainly true of Sweat, which deals with the problem of blue collar workers losing their jobs as businesses shift to overseas sources. The drama has even more claim to attention in Philadelphia because it’s based on actual incidents in the nearby city of Reading.
Unfortunately, the play doesn’t live up to expectations. And the acting and staging are competent without rising to the level where they grip us.
I don’t normally compare one play to another. In this case, however, another recent drama tackled the same subject with superior results: Skeleton Crew, by Dominique Morisseau. (Peoples Light will present the world premiere of her new play, Mud Row, next year.)
As I wrote previously, that drama dealt with the identical problem as this play, in the same year of 2008 when an economic depression gripped the United States. That place was Detroit where factories were closing and employees were powerless in the face of changes that they couldn’t control. Both of the plays spotlight decisions to shutter a factory, and a character who’s torn between enforcing the company line and trying to do what’s best for her co-workers.
Nottage’s play is set in a bar where factory workers gather to spill out their complaints. Three of the characters are continually resentful, strung out, or drunk. I especially sympathize with the fine actress Suli Holum who spends half the play as a giggling alcoholic and the other half as an angry, grimacing one. (Skeleton Crew was set in the break room adjacent to the assembly line, thus keeping the action closer to the subject at hand.)
The owners of this Reading factory want to cut their employees’ wages drastically; their union refuses, and the owners lock the workers out. When hungry, unemployed residents cross the picket lines, some union workers react violently. The fight sequence by Rick Sordelet is momentarily exciting.
Despite Nottage’s research, her play contains insufficient specificity about Reading where I’ve spent a lot of time. It’s a city that was contentedly white middle class and became largely Hispanic and one of the nation’s poorest. And her characters seem like types rather than real people. At least, that’s the way they appear under Justin Emeka’s direction. Earnest performances come from actors Holum, Brian Anthony Wilson, Kimberly S. Fairbanks, Kittson O’Neill, Matteo Scammell, Damien J. Wallace, J. Hernandez, Rich Hebert and Walter DeShields.
Sweat seemed like a logical choice, and it would be premature to judge any particular direction for the new leadership team at PTC. The next selection is a popular Broadway musical by the multifacted Jason Robert Brown. With productions after that, a vision may come into better focus.