Nickel and Dimed

by Joan Holden, Barbara Ehrenreich (Based on)

Can a middle-aged, middle-class woman survive, when she suddenly has to make beds all day in a hotel and live on $7 an hour? Maybe. But one $7-an-hour job won t pay the rent: she ll have to do back-to-back shifts, as a chambermaid and a waitress. This isn t the first surprise for acclaimed author Barbara, who set out to research low-wage life firsthand, confident she was prepared for the worst. Barbara Ehrenreich s best-seller about her odyssey is vivid and witty, yet always deeply sobering. Joan Holden s stage adaptation is a focused comic epic shadowed with tragedy. Barbara is prepared for hard work but not, at 55, for double shifts and nonstop aches and pains; for having to share tiny rooms, live on fast food because she has no place to cook, beg from food pantries, gulp handfuls of Ibuprofen because she can t afford a doctor; for failing, after all that, to make ends meet; or for constantly having to swallow humiliation. The worst, she learns, is not what happens to the back or the knees: it s the damage to the heart. The bright glimpses of Barbara s co-workers that enliven the book become indelible portraits: Gail, the star waitress pushing fifty who can no longer outrun her troubles; Carlie, the hotel maid whose rage has burned down to disgust; Pete, the nursing home cook who retreats into fantasy; Holly, terrified her pregnancy will end her job as Team Leader at Magic Maids, and with it her 50-cent raise. These characters wage their life struggles with a gallantry that humbles Barbara, and the audience. The play shows us the life a third of working Americans now lead, and makes us angry that anyone should have to live it.

Genres: Plays, Fiction, Theatre

67 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 2005

About the author

Joan Holden was an American playwright. For 32 years, she was the resident playwright of the San Francisco Mime Troupe. Holden died from cancer on January 19, 2024, at the age of 85.

Reviews

[Max · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5.
Such a funny adaptation of an amazing book. A lot of the people in Ehrenreich's story felt like characters in the first place and now they get to be that. The Brechtian hold in the middle was strange. I think it could work but it so obviously doesn't match the tone of the rest of the show and I don't know what I'm supposed to do with it.

[Nathan Grant · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm close to giving this one star. This play is not a play. It tries to work as an expose. Problem is, there is no dramatic structure. Barbara gets an idea for a story. Try to live on minimum wages in lower class jobs in America. Of course, she finds it damned near impossible. But let's be honest, if you do any research or don't live in a bubble, you already know there is a wage issue in America. The fact that wait staff in restaurants still work at the same hourly wage they did thirty years ago, you know there's a problem.

Lack of a true middle, end, and actual drama in the story is just one of the problems. The other problem is that the characters, as played by a small cast, are very two dimensional. The audience (or reader) never gets the opportunity to care about any one, so there isn't much impact outside of, "Gee, it's tough for lower class folks." The writer also seems to play the "stupid" card for the rest of the characters. Basically, the characters come off as uneducated dimwits who are struggling because they aren't smart enough to get ahead. That's what it seemed what being written. I don't think it is meant to come across that way, but overall, the portrayal of the characters comes off as shallow.

My last comment is on the unnecessary breaking of the fourth wall. Somewhere in Act II, the actors break character and try to ask the audience questions about hiring cleaning people. This only happens one other time. It is written in as "optional" dialogue, but if Joan Holden really thought it optional, she would have cut it.

Do yourself a favor and watch 30 Days with Morgan Spurlock or one of the many other good documentaries made on this subject. And maybe, the original book this play is based on is worth a read, but right now, I can't imagine reading it.

[Julia · Rating 2 out of 5]

This play is not a comfortable read, because the main character Barbara is so unpleasant, strident. She knows what’s best, what’s legal for everyone, even when it’s clearly not right. She works in low- wage jobs for large corporations (mostly) to demonstrate how hard it is for the working poor in America. The play doesn’t make me want to read Ehrenreich’s book, it makes me want to seek out the play based on Studs Terkel’s Working.

[Sarah · Rating 2 out of 5]

I didn't like the Ehrenreich book when I read that nearly a decade ago (not for the topic, but for the half-assed approach that someone with a life of privilege to fall back on can afford to take) and I'm unaccustomed to reading plays, so this was always going to have some baggage. As the rating stars put it, "it was ok." It was a quick read, and I think some of the content would work better as monologues than it did in Ehrenreich's book, but I probably wouldn't attend a production.

[Lateef · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was pretty neat - I am skeptical about reading books written by journalists because they tend to write in such an ironic, 'i'm so witty,' voice -- but in this case the author's prose worked nicely to describe her situations at she bounces from one low-wage job to the next. An upper middle class lady herself (or perhaps wealthy by now) takes to the low-wage job market and tells us what life is really like.

[Mof · Rating 2 out of 5]

I got it. She has a phd. She thought she could do jobs better than those who did not. She was surprised.
Although the tone is condescending, the message is on target. It is difficult for the lower class to live a reasonable life in America.

[Tania · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent book - everyone in the US should read this book. It is a revealing commentary on class inequality in the US.

[Mike Ferguson · Rating 5 out of 5]

It shows the difficulty of being a single mother with the cards stacked against you in the employment arena.

[Alyson Petroski · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read it for a class about Social Problems and Plays. Intersting.

[Chambers Stevens · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my favorite plays.
And underrated classic.

[Adam Spradlin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really odd source material for a play, really odd execution (now more satire/farce), really already dated, but it somehow mostly worked for me.