Clifford Odets’s Waiting for Lefty, the fiery one-act that launched his playwriting career in the depths of the Great Depression in 1935, moves through seven scenes, from a union hall to a desperate family trying to put food on the table. As critic Harold Clurman recalled in a 1963 appreciation of Odets, “though he had a thrilling gift for dialogue, he was no literary man.” Steven Pasquale’s production for Classic Stage Company, however, intersperses protest songs and dance sequences among the scenes. Although well performed, they dilute the raw intensity of the original.