Lynn Nottage’s newest play, Sweat -- like her Pulitzer Prize winner, Ruined -- takes place primarily in a bar. The bar in “Ruined” is in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The bar in Sweat is closer to home -- Reading, Pennsylvania, ranked this country’s poorest city by the 2011 census.
In Ruined, the conflict is war. In Sweat -- receiving a powerful East Coast premiere at Washington’s Arena Stage -- the conflict is between cost-cutting industry and struggling workers.
American theatergoers are probably less familiar with conditions in Congo than with the loss of industry in American cities. Yet especially in the early going, Sweat spells things out too overtly.
The folks at the Reading bar have speeches about changes at the factory (in this case, a factory that makes metal tubing). They talk about downsizing, and the widening gap between management and labor, and dangerous working conditions.
Stan, the bartender – given a good-hearted portrayal by Jack Willis – lost the use of a leg in an industrial accident, without even an acknowledgement from the company.
Tension builds when one of the bar regulars is promoted to a management job at the plant. Kimberly Scott’s smart, earnest Cynthia claims she’s still on the side of the folks she worked with on the floor. But they don’t see it that way. And the truth is, she doesn’t have much to offer them.
Sweat takes place in two different years: 2000, when the factory asks for major concessions the union refuses to make, and 2008, long after the factory has closed.
Although playwright Nottage and director Kate Whoriskey interviewed Reading citizens for Sweat, the characters are fictitious. It’s the same practice they followed in Ruined.
The action is punctuated by the female characters’ tradition of celebrating their birthdays at the bar. The tone of these celebrations darkens as time goes by.
Two of the women have grown sons we meet in the opening scene, set in 2008, shortly after they’ve been released from prison. Whoriskey gets dynamic performances from her cast – particularly Johanna Day as a hotheaded union member; Tramell Tillman as a young man who envisions a different future for himself; and Reza Salazar as the bar’s Latino-American busboy.
Loyalty – to friends, jobs, relatives and the workplace -- is a recurring theme in Sweat. When these loyalties are breached, the consequences are violent. Like the bar – actually a brothel -- in Ruined, the bar in Sweat is considered “neutral territory,” at least by the bartender. But the issues defy neutrality.
Some of Sweat’s construction could be subtler, and I hope Lynn Nottage – whose playwriting demonstrates great range – isn’t slipping into a formula.
But in an election year when the presidential hopefuls include a business mogul and a socialist, this play about the plight of workers and the devastation of factory towns has an undeniable urgency.
