'Worksong' as good as ensemble theater goes

'Worksong' as good as ensemble theater gets

“Why don't they just take out my brain? I don't need it - not on this job." 
- line from “Worksong”

By CHRISTOPHER POTTER
NEWS ARTS WRITER

Drudgery and dependence, destitution and death. If America’s industrial revolution was indeed forged from the broken bones and brutalized psyches of its workers, you couldn’t ask for a more energetic condemnation than the one currently belted forth by the Common Ground Theater Ensemble over at Performance Network.

This zillion-vignette show is called “Worksong,” a blue-collar words-and-music revue as deadly serious in theme as it is gleefully unrestrained in form. Adapted from its New York text by director Elise Bryant and composer Lisa Wolf into a more "Michiganized” pastiche of worker’s blows against the empire, the show’s script bites off more than it can chew, oscillating erratically between oft wobbly satire/propaganda and harrowingly unadorned worker testimony.

Yet for all “Worksong’s” structural warts, what a knockout production we’ve got here! Bryant’s tight-as-a-drum cast - consisting of five actor/singers, a one-man-band accompanist, plus a sign-language interpreter - stokes a celebration of ensemble theater at its fireballing best, mating an anything-goes versatility with a no-apologies commitment to a point of view.

Gyrating ceaselessly in a kind of grimfaced slapstick, Bryant’s troupe - Michel Daniels, Perry Perrault, Dock Riley, Jeffrey Pickell and N. Rae Sovereign, plus musician Wolf and signer Helen Meador - merrily reincarnate the infamous Frederick Winslow Taylor (slimily played in bushy beard by Perrault), 19th century originator of time-motion work study and forefather to a generation of factory “efficiency experts” (“ . . . and make him glad to do it," advises sinister Freddie on inducing workers to triple-time labor). We’re also offered up the Rockefellers, John and John Jr. (“God bless Standard Oil! God bless us all!”), complete with a ticked-off list of their swallow-the-world holdings ("The Republican Party . . . Peking . . . Walter Mondale...”).

Interspersed with such cynical odes to America the Predatory are neo-vaudevillian confrontations between put-upon secretary and sexist boss, between overworked factory worker and sadistic foreman. A tableau of assemly-line tedium ("Next... next... next... ") segues into a rousing dose of "Get a Job" (sung gorgeously a cappella by the cast); a secretary-management dispute erupts unexpectedly and delightfully into a bump-and-grind rendition of Aretha Franklin's "Respect."

There's much, much more packed into "Worksong's" two-hours-plus. Yet for all the pristine ensemble work - and some of the satirical hammerblows fall painfully flat ("Workers made Dodge cars while the Dodge boys played...") - some of the show's best moments come in its infrequent soliloquies. Actor-mime Perrault offers a shivery portrait of a human-potentialite salesman whose advocacy of go-for-it yuppieism ("You say you don't care about money. I don't belieeeeeve you!") is so slick you almost start believing it.

Yet Perrault's go-for-it glee is starkly counterbalanced by the wrenching testimony of a working mother weary of the strain, sweat and ever-present broken dream of the future ("I'm tired of being strong!"), emoted with such traumatic sorrow by Michel Daniels that the salesman's hymn of Reaganesque paradise seems to evaporate like unpaid child support. "Worksong" may be imperfect theater, but it's a heckuva call to arms.

The cast of 'Worksong' includes, from left, Jeff Pickell, Michel Daniels, Perry Perrault, Dock Riley Jr. and N. Rae Sovereign.

WORKSONG

Common Ground Theater Ensemble presents a play by Marc Kaminsky and the Talking Band, with original music by Ellen Maddow, Sybille Hayn and Elizabeth Swados; additional material adapted by Elise Bryant, additional music and lyrics written by Lisa Wolf. Elise Bryant, director; Perry Perrault, assistant director; Lisa Wolf, musical director; Ron Kramer, set and lighting; N. Rae Sovereign, costumes. Cast includes Michel Daniels, Perry Perrault, Dock Riley, Jeffrey Pickell, N. Rae Sovereign. Production signed by interpreter Helen Meador. Performances continue at Performance Network, 408 W. Washington St., Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 3 p.m. For ticket information, call 663-6433.