Nickel and Dimed
The result of her mini social experiment–or, more accurately, her condescending stunt–was the ferociously praised book Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America. In 200 breezy, self-absorbed pages, the best-selling author with a PhD (she mentions her degree three times) slogs through some particularly crappy jobs: waitress in Florida, maid and nursing home attendant in Maine, Wal-Mart “associate” in Minnesota. The hours are long, and the work is tedious and often degrading. The pay is pitiful, and sometimes the employer withholds the first check as a kind of insurance against employee defection. None of this is news to anyone who’s ever held a menial job. And many of the affronts Ehrenreich suffers–incompetent and overzealous management, random drug tests, insistence on slavish adherence to some corporate code of conduct–aren’t much different from those afflicting my friends with six-figure incomes.
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The result is a well-intentioned play that offers only a superficial glimpse into the lives of the working poor and suggests that the travails of a well-paid writer are worthy of boundless concern. In her biggest error, Holden turns a minor strain in Ehrenreich’s tale–it seems menial work makes her petty and uncharitable–into its major focus: Barbara’s biggest problem is her struggle to remain a nice person. Deborah Leydig handles the part well, although a bit stiffly at first, but she can’t escape the classist condescension that saturates the writing. Director Jeremy B. Cohen, who makes the evening last two and a half long hours, apparently has a difficult time distinguishing between honest portrayals of the working class and distasteful caricatures. The staging’s strangest and most incongruous element, however, is a musician dressed in a black suit perched high above the stage, where he plays the marimbas all evening.
