Sappy rhetoric loses ‘Paradise’
By Daily Bruin Staff
Oct. 26, 1994 9:00 p.m.
Sappy rhetoric loses ‘Paradise’
Depression-era play depicts life during hardship
By Lawrence Sullivan
During the Great Depression my grandfather sold mustard door to
door in Chicago. When it comes down to pushing condiments to muster
up a living, Leo Gordon in Clifford Odets’ "Paradise Lost" seems
justified in saying "the world has a profound dislocation."
In this familiar take on moral economy, set in 1933, Odets
embraces an era that demanded retribution.
When things are going bad we say that they can only get better;
and sure enough they get worse. This is the scenario at the Gordon
home. With financial hardship at the devil of it all, one thing
leads to another, and a happy family, fathered by an angel of a
man, loses everything but hope for mankind.
One penniless son, Ben, marries on the naive notion that his
lovely wife, Libby, will automatically incur success. But Libby’s
fidelity proves even less reliable than his income. While Ben’s out
doing the screwy work of his cocky best friend Kewpie, Libby’s back
home screwing him.
On the other hand, Pearl, the pianist daughter, refuses to
accept her boyfriend’s proposals until they can marry responsibly.
Actress Kelly Johnston plays sympathetically the passionate, but
delicate, young girl who swallows her tears upon Felix’s farewell
and again when the family must sell the piano.
Chuck Rose gives an equally admirable performance as Julie, the
bright, mother’s pride and joy boy with a knack for finance, and
who is dying of sleeping sickness.
While all this makes up not even half of the hard luck story,
where is the retribution?
In response to his wife’s confusion as to what comes next, Ed
Trotta’s benevolent and beloved Leo Gordon says "we’ll go on
living." He confesses, "we’re left with the memory of life, not as
it was, but as it might have been." This use of what I’d call a
retrospective anterior tense  "might have been" Â
implies that if there is still hope, nothing is lost because hope
was all that there ever was.
However, Odets’ magniloquent rhetoric, embodied in Leo Gordon,
is often over-romantic in juxtaposition with the play’s predominant
realism. It’s a bit like selling mustard door to door when there’s
no food on the table.
THEATRE: "Paradise Lost." Written by Clifford Odets. Directed by
Kenneth Klimak. Starring Ed Trotta, Janet Lee Aspers and Harry
Herman. Running through Nov. 19. Playing Thursdays through
Saturdays at 8 p.m. and Sundays at 2 p.m. For info call:
(213)466-1767.
