Woody Guthrie in Soho

At a few minutes after eight o’clock last night, in an upstairs theatre on a Soho alley, you’d have had a job persuading me that Woody Guthrie’s “Deportee (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos)” is not the greatest song produced by the 20th century. Its performance came towards the end of Woody Sez, a stage show devoted to the life and work of the great poet-troubadour of America’s working class. David M. Lutken, a Texan actor-musician who once studied in London, devised the four-person show (with its director, Nick Corley) and was playing the part of Guthrie, his lean frame and likeable delivery making him a good fit. “Deportee”, which Guthrie wrote in 1948 after reading a newspaper report about the crash in California of a plane in which 28 migrant farm workers were being deported back to Mexico, was sung as a duet with Raquel Chavez, and I don’t think I’ve ever heard a more affecting version. But it wasn’t alone as a highlight of the evening. With Lutken delivering Guthrie’s story as a…