“Sweat,” Lynn Nottage’s latest work, is an intensely written and flawlessly performed drama. It will make you laugh and cry as it tells a real story of real people’s lives. We learn stories that we all are familiar with, stories of what happens to people when their factory starts thinking about moving jobs to Mexico. Sitting in Studio 54 on West 54th Street, you watch a play that will touch your heart!
Think about doing a factory job for more than 20 years in a steel mill, working more than 10 hours a day, standing on your feet, the same job that your father and your grandfather did. This job is the only way that you know how to make a living, and generations of your family know this job to be the family occupation. Suddenly you hear rumors that a shake-up is coming, and then you go to work at the factory and find a sign on the door that you can’t go back in. What would you do? How would your life be forever altered? What can the unions really do for you to keep your family afloat?
Well, playwright Nottage looked at what happened in Readen, Pa. and put together a story that makes this scenario much more than just a newspaper headline. She made characters and gave the tragedy of real life people a voice. You see these workers, Black and white, whose children have grown up together and are close friends and now work in the factory as fourth generations, scrambling to figure out what to do when things start to go wrong at the factory. Nottage gives a detailed, sobering look at what things can happen in people’s lives.
There are so many levels to this play. Nottage manages to tell this story from the views of all types of people. You have the factory workers who are terrified of losing their only means of support. You have the factory worker who received a promotion, only to be put in the middle of the upheaval and now be viewed as a traitor to her co-workers. You have the Hispanic young man trying to get accepted into the factory, dreaming of having a better life with a higher rate of pay, who takes on the role of a scab, crossing the picket line and going into the factory to work. Then you have the angry striking workers who want to go after the scabs.
These factory workers have been taken for granted, trampled on and used. They have to fight for the right to feel that they matter. Nottage handles everything in this play with sensitivity and realism.
The way that Nottage structured this piece is very captivating. She allows you to meet two of the characters, who were released from prison after losing eight years of their lives. You hear the problems they are going through, and then you go back eight years before to see how this situation happened. Once you see the dramatic storyline, you find out the outcome in these people’s lives and it’s not a rosey ending. It’s a real-life ending.
Nottage obviously isn’t looking for happy ending, she is looking to bring reality to the stage and show how these real-life issues destroy families, friendship and whole communities. It’s no wonder this play won a Pulitzer Prize for Drama.
The cast of this play delivers their roles with an intensity that grips your soul, draws you in and makes you care. This splendid cast includes African-American Khris Davis, John Earl Jelks, Michelle Wilson, and Lance Coadie Williams, as well as Johanna Day, James Colby, Will Pullen, Alison Wright and Carlo Alban. I was enthralled by this cast.
The ending of this production will leave you touched, stunned and, in my case, in tears. This cast is the same cast that originated these roles when the production was at the Public Theater. It’s no wonder they transitioned the play to Broadway. The cast members bring their A-game and it is extraordinary to see. “Sweat” is stunning! Sweat” has brilliant, riveting direction by Kate Whoriskey. Every element of this production makes it cohesive from the detailed set of John Lee Beatty, to the costume design of Jennifer Moeller, to the lighting design of Peter Kaczorowski.
Go and experience “Sweat”!