The saga of the Broadway premiere of The Cradle Will Rock in 1937 is so famous that one hesitates to mention it. Still, for anyone who may not know about the show, here’s the scoop:
A fiery agitprop musical entirely crafted by Marc Blitzstein, The Cradle Will Rock was funded by the Federal Theatre Project. Those times being explosive with social unrest, the show was shut down (reluctantly: long story) by its government agency on the eve of opening night. Director Orson Welles, producer John Houseman, and Blitzstein then led the company and audience some 20 blocks away to a vacant theater they had secured.
Due to union issues, the orchestra did not appear and the actors were forbidden to perform on the stage. As Blitzstein hammered out his music on an upright piano, the actors in their street clothes performed their roles from various places around the auditorium. This all made headlines, of course. Later that year, produced under commercial auspices, the musical was done in an oratorio format and sustained a respectable run for the period.
[Read Steven Suskin’s ★★★★ review here.]
Ever since, revivals of The Cradle Will Rock usually are produced without scenery or costumes specific to its story and characters.
Accordingly, The Cradle Will Rock seems like an ideal project for John Doyle, a director who made his initial mark in New York by effectively interpreting musicals with bare-bones visuals and few musicians. Doyle currently is the artistic director of Classic Stage Company, so one walks into its theater for his rendition of this musical anticipating that likely he will make the dramatic most of stark circumstances.
But no. This is The Cradle Will Rock staged with some scenery, the actors in costume, and Doyle not at all at his considerable best. Opening on Wednesday, the result is less than impressive.
A mostly sung-through musical cartoon, the episodic story happens in Steeltown U.S.A as its workers vote on whether to form a union. Wielding fistfuls of filthy money, Mr. Mister, the powerful owner of the mill, and Mrs. Mister, his wife, are depicted corrupting the church, the press, the college, the arts, and the law in order to crush the unionization efforts led by heroic Larry Foreman. The Moll, a wistful prostitute, is witness to these doings that culminate in victory for righteous labor over rotten capital. Blitzstein’s jazzy, sometimes even zany, score is an often propulsive mix of popular song styles and sharp wordplay.
It’s too bad that this often fevered, entirely fascinating work’s proletarian and musical charms are muffled in Doyle’s misjudged, under-performed production.
The setting, which Doyle also designed for Classic Stage’s three-quarter arena space, is somewhat misleading. The most prominent feature, at one end, is an old-fashioned wooden telephone pole, its wires fanning out overhead. Other than an upright piano, the remaining scenic pieces are a few dozen oil drums in shades of yellow, rust, and black, which the ensemble rearrange for various locations—in the shape of a cruciform for a sequence in a church, for example.
The actors, however, are not clad in representative 1930s clothes as citizens, but instead wear the grimy denims and overalls of laborers. Such visuals do not suggest a Steeltown so much as an Oil City.
From the not entirely resonant sound of music they make, performers who more or less sing (and more or less act, alas) have been chosen for the 10-member company.
Tops among them, David Garrison provides the most striking presence as a steely, disdainful Mr. Mister who throws money on the ground rather than actually put his bribes into people’s hands. At the bottom there’s Tony Yazbeck, a pleasant song-and-dance man, who at least manages to be spirited, but does not possess the soulful grit or baritone vocals necessary to do justice by dynamic Larry Foreman.
Other performances tend to be spotty. Among the more satisfying turns, Benjamin Eakeley gives a sad dignity to a craven clergyman; Kara Mikula sports a nice sense of period style as Sister Mister; and Lara Pulver sings the role of the Moll with an appropriately plaintive quality. Four of the performers spell each at the piano, and rather well, too.
Generally, there’s too little zest to their group effort, however, and the show merely plods along rather than rouses the audience. Sad to say, this rendition of The Cradle Will Rock scarcely rocks at all.
The Cradle Will Rock opened April 3, 2019, at the Classic Stage Company and runs through May 19. Tickets and information: classicstage.org
