The Actors’ Gang is my favorite L.A. theatre troupe, and its revival of Irwin Shaw’s 1936 play Bury the Dead reconfirms my choice of this politically conscious ensemble as my personal preference. Originally produced on Broadway in between the two world wars, this pacifist-leaning drama joins Aristophanes’ Lysistrata, Bertolt Brecht’s Mother Courage and Dalton Trumbo’s Johnny Got His Gun as one of the most powerful antiwar stage productions.

Death, of course, is a recurring theme in art. Mexican painters mocked it; Max von Sydow’s knight poignantly played chess with the Grim Reaper in a desperate gambit to forestall death’s inevitable triumph in Ingmar Bergman’s 1957 The Seventh Seal. In Woody Allen’s 2006 Scoop, Ian McShane’s investigative reporter literally jumps death’s ship in order to return to the land of the living.

As a 22-year-old playwright, Shaw adapted Austrian playwright Hans Chlumberg’s Miracle at Verdun, imagining and examining how the war dead feel about their slaughter. Following a fierce battle Shaw subtitled “A Play about the War That Is to Begin Tomorrow Night,” a cemetery detail is dispatched to bury six fallen soldiers. However, in a supernatural twist, the corpses come back to life and refuse to be buried.

All hell breaks loose. Instead of being happy about this development, the high command considers it to be the cadavers’ patriotic duty to go softly into the night, and goes nuts when the dead men say heaven can wait, upsetting the natural order of wars since time immemorial. Once the mass media gets wind of this breaking news, the strike against death becomes a national scandal. In order to lure the deceased to their not-so-happy hunting grounds, the generals dispatch the men’s female loved ones to talk them into submissively agreeing to be buried.  But the best laid plans of mice and men… 

When Bess Schelling (Erin Anderson) asks Private John Schelling (Andrew Wheeler) “how is it [death]?” her husband replies: “…Maybe there’s too many of us under the ground now. Maybe the earth can’t stand it no more.” After Joan (Stephanie Carrie) asks Private Henry Levy (John Pick) “why don’t you let them bury you?” her boyfriend responds: “There were a lot of things I loved on this earth,” and waxes poetic about the glories of women.

Mrs. Dean (Annemette Andersen) likewise urges her son: “Let them bury you.” Private Dean (Jesse Luken) sums up the protest of the dead, declaring: “I was only 20, Mom. I hadn’t done anything. I hadn’t seen anything. I never even had a girl. I spent 20 years practicing to be a man and they killed me…” At his mother’s repeated urging to see her son’s “baby face,” the soldier removes his facial bandages; defaced by an artillery shell, his mother wails in grief.

The best lines are reserved for another married couple, the impoverished Websters. When Private Webster (Brian Allman) tries to explain “why I’m standing up now,” wife Martha (Donna Jo Thorndale) angrily retorts:“ What took you so long, then? Why not a month ago, a year ago, ten years ago? Why didn’t you stand up then? Why wait until you’re dead!”

A good question!

Shaw was part of that Depression era’s “Proletarian Theatre,” with plays about working class struggles. As such, Shaw transforms Chlumberg’s fatalistic ending with a more revolutionary act of defiance. Other prominent examples of Proletarian Theatre include Marc Blitzstein’s Cradle Will Rock directed by Orson Welles and Clifford Odets’ Waiting for Lefty, which ends with actors inviting audience members to chant “Strike!” Two current books chronicle the 1930s’ New Deal era theatre – Susan Quinn’s Furious Improvisations, How the WPA and a Cast of Thousands Made High Art Out of Desperate Times and Nick Taylor’s American-Made, The Enduring Legacy of the WPA. Although Shaw’s Bury the Dead was not a Works Progress Administration production, the script was published in New Theatre and its Broadway premier was a benefit for that leftwing journal and the New Theatre League, which was dedicated to workers dramas. This play by Shaw – who went on to be blacklisted after writing the novels The Young Lions and Rich Man, Poor Man, which the 1958 WWII movie co-starring Marlon Brando and Montgomery Clift and the 1976 TV mini-series were based on -- remains a prime example of Proletarian Theatre.

Today, It can be said that the Actors’ Gang, guided by visionary Artistic Director Tim Robbins, continues this tradition into a 21^st century America still suffering from war and economic crises. I can’t wait to see its January production of the anti-Vietnam War drama The Trial of the Catonsville Nine!

Bury the Dead plays at the Ivy Substation, 9070 Venice Blvd., Culver City on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays at 8:00 p.m. and Sundays at 3:00 p.m. through Sept. 13. For more info: 310/838-GANG or log onto www.theactorsgang.com.