A line of cabdrivers under one hard pool of light, arms flung out toward the house. The first production photos from Classic Stage Company’s Waiting for Lefty are out, two weeks before Steven Pasquale’s staging of the Clifford Odets play opens on East 13th Street.
The shots, by Marc J. Franklin, show the room the production has built: bare wooden boards, chairs stacked against a brick wall, a balcony rail overhead, and a guitarist standing on a chair at the edge of the crowd while the rest of the company reaches out past the footlights. It looks less like a set than a meeting hall the audience has wandered into.
Odets wrote the play in 1935. Depression-era New York taxi drivers gather to decide whether to strike, and the pressure builds while they wait for their leader, Lefty, to turn up. Steven Pasquale, known as an actor, is directing for the first time, and he has staged it with music and movement. Yeller Tooth, the duo of company members Sahar Milani and Cameron Scoggins, supplies original music and arrangements, and Susan Misner choreographs.
The company is Tala Ashe, Raffi Barsoumian, Austin Durant, Greg Hildreth, Adam Kantor, Doireann Mac Mahon, Zach McNally, Milani, Scoggins and Henry Stram. Scott Adam Davis designs the set, Márion Talán de la Rosa the costumes, Mextly Couzin the lighting and Palmer Hefferan the sound.
Previews began October 15 at the Lynn F. Angelson Theater, 136 East 13th Street. Opening night is November 2, and the limited engagement ends November 22, 2026. Around the run, the company is hosting sit-ins and talkbacks on the labor movement, and union and guild members can get $30 rush seats at the box office.
Tickets are on sale through our Waiting for Lefty page.
