Andrea Stevens reviews a Manhattan play based on "Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America," socialist writer's Barbara Ehrenreich's bookabout the working lives of the working class.As usual [1], the Timesreview matches up well with the left-wing politics onstage.
Stevens' review is entitled, "Evoking Lives Struggling To Exist on Bare Minimums [2]," andher creduloustext matches well with Ehrenreich's left-wing boilerplate: "Barbara Ehrenreich's voyage into the world of the working poor made headlines when her book about her low-wage service jobs came out in 2001. A best seller, 'Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America' was adapted in 2002 into a play that is only now being given its New York premiere, by the 3Graces Theater Company.
"There is nothing dated about the subject, when Congress has not raised the federal minimum wage of $5.15 an hour since 1997, or, as a character in the play says about looking for an apartment, 'There's just no place left in this town for working people to live.'
"In her book Ms. Ehrenreich, a writer and academic, says about America in the age of the bottom line and welfare reform, 'The poor have disappeared from the culture at large, from its political rhetoric and intellectual endeavors.'
"The play, with its exhausted fast-food cooks, waitresses, house cleaners, big-box-store saleswomen, and their striving managers happy to withhold the last penny from those they supervise, should offer one way into that missing public dialogue. But despite several excellent performances by the cast and a live band that is fitfully effective, the production at the Bank Street Theater is less promising than it might be."
There's more Times praise for the socialist Ehrenreich here [3].