A lot of thought went into staging ‘Working’

"Working" is a plotless musical based on Studs Terkel’s 1974 paean to the common man, and if there’s one thing it needs as much as first-rate singing voices, it’s characters. The script is populated with a cross section of types that represent America’s labor force. Unless we believe we’re hearing that labor force singing, then the show has no substance.

Jade Productions/Super Summer Theatre’s production often gives us the best of both worlds.

It’s obvious from the opening number — a salutary choral burst of energy — that director Joy Demain has selected performers who know how to tear the roof off during a song. It’s soon equally obvious that she’s given a lot of thought to who the people in this play are supposed to be.

When we meet Chris Hermening as an ironworker, he seems really caught up in the particulars of his job. Later, we’re introduced to Kelly Ward-Radan as a housewife who grows steadily and genuinely angrier as she sings about the ways her profession is disrespected. Then there’s Brian Greesley as a firefighter who projects the kind of urgency that convinces us he’s just risked his life in a major disaster — and likes it. (He says he used to be a cop but changed jobs. "Why?" he remarks. "Because I like people!)

What these and several others have in common is that while they are skilled performers, they don’t come across as actors. They don’t project that artificial gloss that would make it impossible for us to think of them as ordinary folk.

There are, however, an equal number who do give us too much show-biz veneer. The script ventures a little too often into sentiment, and the director doesn’t apply the brakes.

David Schulman’s lights are varied and powerful. But Demain’s set — stairwells and platforms with lots of black — looks as if it were meant for a much smaller stage, and found in a flea market. A show is usually in trouble when the title is the set’s centerpiece.

But much is redeemed by Pat Demain’s spirited five-piece onstage band, as well as Kristin Gressley’s effervescent choreography.

And, thanks to designer Katherine Gonzalez, Super Summer Theatre has, at long last, a sound system actually worth listening to. As with past shows, I sat there in the beginning waiting for the aural assault. It never happened.

Anthony Del Valle can be reached at DelValle@aol.com. You can write him c/o Las Vegas Review-Journal, P.O. Box 70, Las Vegas, NV 89125.