Terkel’s Ode to Labor Still Works

“You either work with your back, or you work with your head. Head is better.”

That was my Chicago-born father’s advice, and fellow Chicagoan Studs Terkel, author of the book that formed the basis of the 1978 musical “Working,” would probably agree. It’s just that Terkel, who interviewed dozens of people in various occupations for the book, is a true-blue believer in his hometown’s label as “the city of big shoulders.”

As a veteran journalist, essayist and radio voice, Terkel works with his head, but romanticizes those who work with their backs.

The fine Ascending Artists Stage Company, in its solid revival of “Working” at Grove Theatre Center Burbank, serves to remind us that the show is really a love letter to laborers, and tends to portray those who make big money--or work in money--as ethically suspect at best.

Fortunately, directors Nick Mize and Andy Ferrara and their cast don’t treat the musical like a relic of leftist politics, especially in those sections in which the show is timeless.

Members of the ensemble don numerous guises, from fireman to hooker to UPS delivery man to receptionist, and must also contend with an inevitably uneven vocal score written by no fewer than six composers: Craig Carnelia, Micki Grant, Mary Rodgers, Susan Birkenhead, Stephen Schwartz and James Taylor.

But what matters from a performance standpoint is that the group’s best singer, Alica Gallagher, gets the show’s best song, “Just a Housewife.”

This dramatic ballad of domesticity, certainly the musical theater’s most poetic nod to women who work at home for their families, is powered by Gallagher’s magnetic passion. You can work with your voice too.

Bryna Weiss, as a grade-school teacher lamenting how standards have declined (and how she wishes she could paddle naughty students), superbly sums up a complex character in her talk-sing approach to “Nobody Tells Me How.”

Orlando Montes’ elegant tenor voice, accompanied by guitar, goes full flight in a possibly too pretty tune about migrant farm workers.

The most noble interludes involving big-shoulder types, such as Mike the ironworker (David Kieran) who opens and closes the show, somehow lack conviction--as if the actors themselves know that we’ve moved into a world in which the very definition of a “working person” is flexible. (These theater people, along with musical director Robert Parker’s live and lively quartet, certainly work, and they may wonder why an artist isn’t represented in Terkel’s gallery.)

The more show-biz style numbers, such as “It’s an Art” (featuring Lesley Green as a waitress) and “Cleaning Woman” (with Caroline Cunningham), don’t succeed because Mize and Ferrara can’t stage the movement onstage and because the voices can’t burst out above the band’s sound. By contrast, “Joe,” a wonderfully crafted song about a widower retiree (Bill Bolender) is simplicity itself, and unforgettable. And where the working stiff, such as Mark Slater’s violence-minded newspaper copy boy, is shown to be less than decent, this version of “Working” finds texture beyond Terkel’s labor-minded homilies.

*

“Working,” Grove Theatre Center Burbank, 1100 W. Clark, Burbank. Fridays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 2 p.m. Ends May 20. $12.50-$20. (818) 509-1041. Running time: 2 hours.