For many people, work is a joy, a mission, even a calling, like Mark Malloy’s stone mason in “Working,†the musical based on Studs Terkel’s book.
“Stone’s my business,†the construction worker tells us. “Stone’s my life.â€
This is one robust, happy guy who has left his mark on the world, and Malloy, a barrel-shaped fellow in a lime green T-shirt and baggy pants makes us believe it in Goshen Players’ production at Goshen’s Old Town Hall.
“Nothing lasts forever. But stone comes close,†he says, giving the audience a wink.
“And you get to wear a tool belt, like a cowboy.â€
This two-act musical with book by Stephen Schwartz and Nina Faso and songs by Schwartz and a variety of composers including Mary Rodgers and James Taylor is a sharp and often poignant look at working in America. The notion that you are what you do, occupational profiling, really, comes up again and again, and the stone mason is irked when a college kid is stunned to see a book stuffed into the laborer’s jeans.
Many of these jobs are sapping, of course, the only way to survive in a mean and narrow world. Joe Trelli as Robert, a migrant worker, aches to show people the human cost of getting a piece of fruit on their table, and Sarah Gilbert plays a hooker who started young and feels cold and alone. Still, she can look you in the eye and ask “Can you make $100 in 20 minutes?â€
“Working†struggles to tell us who is engaged by their job and who is deadened by it. The answer seems to be their reason for working. Even if it seems soulless and unredeeming, the cleaning woman, the third generation in the family to pick up after others, does the work to make certain her daughter breaks the chain.
Sometimes, love is the best reason of all to labor.
“Working†runs weekends through May 15 at Goshen’s Old Town Hall. Last matinee, May 9 at 5 p.m. All other performances, May 7,8, 14, 15 at 8 p.m.
For reservations, call 860-491-9988, or go online: www.goshenplayers.org.
