Following its initial run, Waiting For Lefty earned Odets a great deal of popularity, thanks to its resonating with the general public and its sparse stage directions allowing for easy productions to take place across the United States. Odets went on to produce a number of plays dealing with similar subject matter, including Awake and Sing! and Paradise Lost.
Karl Marx's Communist Manifesto serves as a philosophical framework for the play, and is very heavily alluded to in Edna's dialogue.
Refer to other examples of agitprop and leftist theater, including the works of Brecht.
