I wear my bleeding heart on my sleeve. Though only born during the socially conscious 60s, I found myself drawn more to Walden Pond and Trotsky during the Go-Go 80s than my Yuppie contemporaries. It is my way of thinking that makes me a sucker for Actors Theatre’s current production of Joan Holden’s adaptation of Barbara Ehrenreich’s popular novel Nickel and Dimed. It’s the kind of bitingly comic play that preaches to the converted by confirming for us liberal theatergoers that working poverty is bad, our current minimum wage is nowhere near the level of a living wage, and the phrase “compassionate conservatism” is an oxymoron. I love the rather predictable message, really like Kirk Jackson’s slick production, and dig the wonderfully consistent performer’s and designer’s offerings. The only thing that bothers me is the futility of telling these things to a theater audience; it’s like telling a bunch of Texans to hate the liberal East Coast aristocracy.

The show follows the exploits of the comfortably upper middle Barbara (Cathy Dresbach) as she begins writing a book on what it means to take a series of lower-wage jobs and actually make ends meet. She becomes a short-order waitress and works housekeeping at a hotel in Florida. She moves to Maine to tackle professional home-cleaning and nutrition at a retirement community. Finally, she spends the final month in Minneapolis on the floor of a large retail chain. She chronicles not only the drudgery of the work, but the mania of trying to make rent, pay bills, and eat on the pittance paid to her and the systematic lowering of her self respect. The people she meets along the way become more than statistics; they are the casualties of capitalism who expand into living, breathing humans who struggle to hold onto children, health, marriages, and their wits. Five actors (Maria Amorocho, Elaine Bardwell, Natalie Messersmith, Pattie Davis Suarez, and Oliver Wadsworth) fill the sensible shoes of this diverse population.

Jackson has done an excellent job of keeping this play moving briskly, creating a kaleidoscope of shuffling set pieces and an assembly line of different visually striking activities. The timing is simply incredible, and he has worked with cast and crew to keep the action propelling forward on Jeff Thomson’s creative modular set lit by Michael Eddy’s stark illumination, marching to the music of David Temby’s pinpoint sound design, and seamlessly swapping into and out of Connie Furr’s myriad of perfectly character-specific costumes. It’s impossible not to know where this play is heading, but it is brisk enough to keep us from becoming annoyed.

It’s impossible to play favorites in examining this cast; they are all adept at malleability. Dresbach is called upon to address the audience, and break character in the middle of scenes, things she is great at doing, and here she sells us Barbara as only she could. Amorocho easily switches genders from a hard-drinking Hispanic short-order cook to an on-the-edge-of-losing-it maid team member. Bardwell hilariously plays a subcontinent Indian restaurant manager one moment and a hotel housekeeper with bad knees next without a hitch. I love how Messersmith can play a nihilistic teenaged restaurant patron with as much ease as she can an overly-enthusiastic team leader. Suarez jumps all over the map from a true south Florida accent to an upper crust snob from Maine and never overleaps a state. Wadsworth is as malleable as ever no matter the nationality or temperament of his character. No favorites, just an excellent ensemble franticly switching Manuela Needhammer’senjoyable wigs.