A ‘Babbitt’ for the new millennium

“BABBITT,” Sinclair Lewis’ Nobel Prize-winning dissection of 1920s middle-class society, has “astonishing” resonance for today, says David Rambo. So Rambo has now written a theatrical adaptation of the novel -- its first -- that will receive two staged readings at A Noise Within in Glendale July 8 and 9.

Rambo, a writer and co-producer for TV’s “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation” and a Los Angeles-based playwright whose drama “God’s Man in Texas” has become a staple of U.S. regional theaters, was commissioned by A Noise Within to adapt Lewis’ classic.

But the idea of bringing this tragicomic epic about suburban businessman George F. Babbitt’s avid, elusive pursuit of the American dream to the stage had been percolating in Rambo’s mind for many years.

(“Babbitt” has been dramatized before, by L.A. Theatre Works, but in an unabridged, 14 1/2 -hour reading of the novel that aired on public radio station KCRW in 1987, with Ed Asner, Julie Harris and Richard Dreyfuss among a cast of 34.)

“ ‘Babbitt’ is about a middle-aged real estate agent who has some inner sense of being unfulfilled, and when I first read the novel,” Rambo observes wryly, “I was a middle-aged real estate agent who had a vague feeling of being unfilled.”

Even then, he was aware of the theatricality in Lewis’ vivid tapestry of characters, and in writing the adaptation, he was struck by the enduring relevance of the novel’s underlying themes.

“Consumerism is just as rampant 100 years later as it was then, which may be part of our American character,” he says. “That’s something the novel explores in an oblique way, and I hope we can underline it. There’s also the whole question of ‘following the leader,’ in a jingoistic way, something a lot of people are thinking about today.”

A Noise Within’s cast of 10 will play 90 roles among them and will carry scripts. But with more than two weeks of rehearsal, unusual for a staged reading, the play, Rambo says, will be “a suggestion of what may come.”

A full production may be mounted for the company’s 2007-08 season, says Julia Rodriguez-Elliott, A Noise Within’s co-artistic director.

“That is the hope.”

A question-and-answer session with the playwright, director and actors will follow the performances. A third, free performance July 7 is slated for L.A. County-area teachers and students.

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Lynne Heffley