In this week's impromptu theatrical seminar on the 1930s, the most unexpected entry is Arthur Miller's "The American Clock" at Pitt. While John Steinbeck's "Of Mice and Men" (Prime Stage) and August Wilson's "The Piano Lesson" (CMU) focus on the individual dream of owning land, "American Clock" takes on the whole decade.

Most surprising is Arthur Miller. Granted, he lived 89 years, writing productively for more than 60, creating some three dozen plays and innumerable TV and radio plays and film scripts. But nothing in what we mainly know of his work is adequate preparation for "American Clock."

First staged in 1980, it underwent several revisions. At Pitt it's billed as a "vaudeville," which is to say it's loosely structured of disparate elements, some of them musical. But it's also like a small Clifford Odets (or Arthur Miller) play about a Depression-era family much like Miller's own, folded piecemeal into a historical pageant -- sort of like Noel Coward's better-structured "Cavalcade" or even the "Steel/City" produced by Pitt in 1992.

As such, it makes clear its debt to Studs Terkel's oral history, "Hard Times." And under Robert C.T. Steele's direction, its lively heart is in its baker's dozen of popular songs.

Their titles would string together into a pretty fair epitome of the Depression: "Million Dollar Baby," "Sunny Side of the Street," "We Gather Together to Ask the Lord's Blessing," "Brother, Can You Spare a Dime," "Paper Moon," "I Want to Be Happy," "My Blue Heaven," "Life Is Just a Bowl of Cherries." These very titles are pungent commentary on the plot.

I'd call them happy songs, or at least wanna-be-happy songs, but more to the point, people actually sang them, a way for a society to share identity in hard times.

Miller starts in 1929, everyone flush with cash in a nation of stock tipsters; "Put my $10 on General Electric," says a shoeshine guy, as if placing a bet, which he is. Then comes the crash, signaled by a single suicide, followed by such economic upheaval it's surprising (the play is surprised) we didn't have a revolution. Maybe it's because the cops were always paid or the opiate-of-the-masses pop songs provided sufficient release.

The family much like Miller's is the Baums. With Moe and Rose played by pros Elena Alexandratos and Doug Mertz, they have a very specific gravity, and Bjorn Anlstedt, an undergraduate, like most of the cast, is an appealing Lee, the son who is pretty much Miller himself.

Beyond the Baums, the play sprawls all over. Some 21 actors play 79 roles. Even subtracting all the Welfare Applicants, Marathon Dancers and Iowa Farmers, there are 36 named roles. Placards announce the passage of the years, and emblematic scenes flash by. Although the Baums provide heart, it isn't big enough to animate fully such earnest, educational material.

But the play does have contemporary relevance. The fear of distant mega-corporations is like today's fear of outsourcing. Twelve Big Tobacco executives are said to make more than 30,000 farmers who raise the crop. And we're constantly told that confidence is a moral imperative, so the crash is the fault of those who pointed to the financial house of cards.

Director Steele handles the huge traffic of this stage adroitly enough, with Claire Natale to arrange the dance numbers. But I don't understand why some characters are left on stage so much. Marissa Miskanin's costumes add period color and Timothy Tucker plays live piano accompaniment -- "American Clock" will appeal to many as a pageant/revue.

As a play, it pays off most in Act 2. Rose gets to sing a love song to her piano and deliver a fine monologue of bewilderment ("Brooklyn drifts farther into the Atlantic"). Lee travels the country and discovers scenes that could come from Steinbeck. There's a strangely wonderful scene between a dentist and a pragmatic prostitute, and a poignant one where Moe must lie to help his son get on relief.

Other pros in the mainly student cast are Melanie Dreyer and Bruce McConachie. Still, much of the time the swirl of scenes is such that you can hardly tell the players even with a scorecard.

Love those songs, though.