Babe’s ‘Skyline’ Sings a Song of Joe Hill

Before any of the modern-day labor organizers, there were the International Workers of the World--and Joe Hill.

“He was a central figure in 20th-Century radicalism,” explained Thomas Babe, whose “Salt Lake City Skyline” opens this weekend at the Odyssey. “Joe Hill was one of the chief spokespersons of the I.W.W. (a.k.a. ‘Wobblies’), a popular organizer--and he also wrote songs. So he was kind of the bard of the movement. He’d show up at places where people were organizing and write a song for it.”

Hill’s visibility resulted in several arrests, ending with his conviction of murder and execution by firing squad in 1915. “There were whole bunches of charges on the books that aren’t there now,” said Babe (“Demon Wine”), who’s set the play at Hill’s final trial. “It was at the discretion of law authorities to put anybody in jail. And Joe (a.k.a.Joel Hagglund and Joseph Hillstrom) was always moving around so much, he was an easy target.”

In researching his subject, the Connecticut-based writer (whose long-ago introduction to Hill was Joan Baez’s song, “I Dreamed I Saw Joe Hill Last Night”) was drawn to “this extremely enigmatic figure; he played it very close to the vest. There were also a lot of questions, then and now, about how much he courted martyrdom. He could have had a defense for his crime, he also acted very obstreperous in court. The big question is why.”

Frank Condon directs.

THEATER BUZZ: Wasn’t that Lyle Alzado we saw leaving a rehearsal room at Los Angeles Theatre Center a few weeks ago? Seems the former football star was set to appear in “Strong-Man’s Weak Child,” but bowed out when ongoing talks with the Raiders reached the negotiation stage.

According to his publicist, although the 41-year-old Alzado had been looking forward to his stage debut, “what he really wants is to play full-time football.” The athlete-turned-actor-turned-athlete announced his re-hiring last week at his local restaurant, Alzado’s; he begins mini-camp tomorrow.

CRITICAL CROSSFIRE: “Once in Arden,” Richard Hellesen’s biographical story of 19th-Century Polish stage star Helena Modjeska, is currently playing at South Coast Repertory. Martin Benson directs Nan Martin as Modjeska.

Said Sylvie Drake in The Times: “Despite eloquent sets, elegant costumes, splendid Chopin renditions bridging the scene changes, and efforts by Benson to huff and puff some life into the piece, ‘Arden’ just lies there, stillborn.”

The Daily News’ Daryl H. Miller agreed: “While ‘Arden’ addresses timely issues, it doesn’t captivate its audience. The characters come across as mouthpieces for various ideas, rather than as real people motivated by real emotions. The action is also static.”

From the Orange County Register’s Thomas O’Connor: “(It’s) about setting up a clash--between art and commerce, between sensibility and sense. If it may not be a sturdy enough hook on which to hang a weighty drama, Hellesen has the stage smarts not to stack the (deck) entirely in his heroine’s favor.”