Waiting for Lefty

In Waiting for Lefty, the radical play of the 1930s, Clifford Odets’s characters suffer not only from poverty but also from disintegrating families and a decline of individual honor. The audiences, caught up in a felt connection between their own plight and the play’s version of the country’s political failures, would often join the actors at the end in shouting “Strike! Strike!” American liberalism is these days experiencing its own “Waiting for Lef...