In the early thirties a young man not long out of school was thrown into the world of baliffs and bankruptcy upon taking a job in an accountancy firm. New York was in the midst of the great upheaval of the Depression, a chaotic time of strikes and massive unemployment. Fortunes were made and lost in no time at all. In the midst of it all this young man, Jerome Weidman, fetched and carried on behalf of his accountancy firm, observing the chaos around him. He wrote a book based on these experiences called I Can Get It For You Wholesale, published in 1937.
     Such was the inspiration for a production of the same name, a new version of which, adapted by Weidman with the help of Harold Rome, is presently being shown at the Arcola Theatre. The theatre, created out of an old clothes factory with people still making clothes upstairs, is appropriate for this piece set in the up-and-down world of an inner-city clothing sweatshop.
    Harry Bogon, an ambitious young man (played by Joseph Wicks) fighting to keep above the povety line by working as a shipping clerk for clothing mogul Mr Pulvermacher (Phillip Anthony), decides to open his own business. He no longer wants to work for a pittance on someone else's terms; he wants to make it on his own, and above all he wants to be rich. His youth and ambition push him into gambles that wiser people would not dare to take, and he is unscrupulous. His fight to establish a business pays off, but his love of money turns his success into eventual downfall. The play shows how dangerously blind success can make people, for Harry Bogon loses almost everything in the very attempt to become invincible. The New York garment industry was then largely worked by Russian Jewish immigrants, whose values of family and probity make a sharp contrast to Harry Bogon's depravity, and form the backdrop of his eventual failure.
    This is a play with music, whose strong klezmer influence evokes the ethnic origin of the characters. The songs deepen the piece emotionally; Rosanne Priest as Ruthie gives a notably strong performance in a number of solos. If there was a flaw in the the production it was the New York accents, which sounded British and artificial and might best have been left unattempted.
Elizabeth Shenton