Sweat: An Honest Portrayal of the Working Class in America

Sweat, a riveting new play at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles, offers an honest and emotionally raw portrayal of the working class in America.

Last week, the hubbs and I enjoyed a date night at the Mark Taper Forum at the Music center in Downtown Los Angeles for the Opening Night of Sweat, an intense new play from Lynn Nottage. Sweat, winner of the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, is an emotionally raw and honest look at working class Americans and the challenges they face to stay afloat.

Sweat is based on Nottage’s extensive research and countless hours of interviews with residents and factory workers of the industrial town of Reading, Pennsylvania. The story takes place during the 21st century and centers around a group of friends who spend their days working at a local factory and their nights sharing drinks, secrets, and laughs at a local bar. However, the real drama ensues when layoffs start to happen at the plant and these once amicable friends find themselves pitted against each other in order to survive.

Sweat is one of those plays that takes you on an intense all-consuming emotional journey of real uncensored everyday life. You feel immersed in the ugliness and authenticity of the struggles of the working class and it totally sucks you in. It’s just so honest and real and the acting was superb. I loved the back and forth story telling showing the result of actions back ten years prior and what it led up to. It’s a story about family, parenthood, friendship, passion, racism, rage, drug abuse, jealously, politics, and class struggles that is totally relevant today.

My husband and I thoroughly enjoyed this show and it was one of those plays that we continued to discuss hours after ended. If you are a fan of plays that completely transport you into someone else’s life and the challenges that they face, I highly recommend heading to the Taper for this fantastic show. Sweat is playing at the Mark Taper Forum now through October 7, 2018.