John Doyle and his Classic Stage Company brightened the musical theater scene last summer with a dynamic production of the long-dormant Carmen Jones. They now turn their attention to Marc Blitzstein’s 1937 The Cradle Will Rock, which was written several years earlier but is in every aspect miles away from Carmen Jones. The CSC Cradle doesn’t rock quite so well, but it is an admirable presentation of an historically important musical. Doyle and his denizens blow the accumulated dust off the piece, bringing out the strengths in this most uncompromising work.
The backstory of The Cradle has, in popular culture, taken over the piece itself. The assertively pro-labor musical was produced in the darkest days of the Depression by the Federal Theatre Project, part of the government’s Works Progress Administration. When federal officials learned, the day of the opening, just what it was they were sponsoring, they closed the show and locked the theater. The 22-year-old director—Orson Welles, by name—and cohort found an empty theater, moved in an out-of-tune piano, and like the Pied Piper led the opening night audience through the streets. Actor’s Equity refused to allow its members to perform on stage, so most of the cast sat in the house and—while Blitzstein pounded out the score—rose in their seats to deliver their lines. This was all recounted in Tim Robbins’ 1999 film, also called The Cradle Will Rock.
All of which explains why the events surrounding Cradle are more familiar than the material—which is, admittedly, difficult to pull off. Blitzstein was a little-known composer and avowed Communist, eagerly contributing topical songs for political rallies. He played one of them—“The Nickel Under the Foot,” it was called—for the celebrated Bertolt Brecht, who advised that the composer write an entire musical around the theme of exploitation.
[Read Michael Sommers’ ★★ review here.]
The Cradle supports unionism by going after big business; it takes place in what they call Steeltown, U.S.A., controlled by steel magnate Mr. Mister (David Garrison). This was a dangerous attack on one of the most powerful men in the country, Henry Ford, who—facing a 1932 protest by auto workers—had ordered the police in with guns, resulting in what is still called the Ford Massacre. Which helps explain why the U.S. government pulled the plug on The Cradle.
The self-described “play with music” begins with the arrest of The Moll (Lara Pulver), who works in a factory two days a week and scrounges what she can on the streets because “on those [other] five days it’s nice to eat.” A vagrant druggist who lost his shop and his son to Mr. Mister explains that the industrialist’s supporters are, in effect, soliciting like the Moll. “They won’t buy our milkwhite bodies, so we kinda sell out in some other way to Mr. Mister.”
This sets Blitzstein on a spree of vignettes, with Mrs. Mister (Sally Ann Triplett) demanding support for her husband from the clergy, the press, the town’s artists, and the university crowd—all of whom, indeed, eagerly and enthusiastically sell out. (If The Cradle has an inherent weakness, it is that the relatively untried Blitzstein was learning as he went along—and some of the vignettes are not quite up to the quality of the others.) After the numerous vignettes, union leader Larry Foreman (Tony Yazbeck), is brought into court following a police beating. He tangles with Mr. Mister, and, with the approach of an army of striking steelworkers, machinists, boilermakers and more, emerges victorious. The cradle rocks—and the capitalist system falls. At least, in Blitzstein’s musical.
Doyle puts his well-known devices to work on the piece, stripping it down to essentials. Since The Cradle has traditionally been performed in the same piano-only style as the 1937 premiere, Doyle’s favored use of actor-musicians works perfectly: Four of the cast members accompany the action when their characters are not center stage, at one point (“The Rich”/“Art for Art’s Sake”) in a grand four-hand arrangement. The director has also provided a simple design, built around the use of drum-like construction cannisters. (The effective costumes come from Ann Hould-Ward, the excellent lighting from Jane Cox and Tess James.) And while the use of props rarely merits discussion, Doyle has Mrs. Mister and Mr. Mister scatter greenbacks throughout the piece, with a canny artistic payoff.
The intimate production places full attention on the cast, revealing some fine performances. Yazbeck continually impresses as a strong singer and actor (to say nothing of a dancer, a talent which is not used herein). He makes a compelling case for the union organizer Larry Foreman, a role which has been played by the likes of Howard Da Silva, Alfred Drake, Jerry Orbach and—in the 2013 Encores! Off-Center production—Raúl Esparza. Not only does Yazbeck score as Foreman; Doyle sees fit to have him double in the relatively incidental role of Harry Druggist. He does exceptionally well with it, bringing the role to far more prominence than usual; what’s more, Doyle keeps Yazbeck—as either Larry or Harry—spotlighted, always observing the goings-on.
Similarly spotlighted is Garrison, as Mr. Mister, who pulls the strings that propel The Cradle. The actor is so familiar to us—you might remember him as the speed-obsessed Titanic-owner J. Bruce Ismay, who at the last minute jumped into one of the “women and children only” lifeboats instead of going down with the ship—that we tend to take for granted his powerful talents as comedian and/or villain. His Mr. Mister is dominant not only in the context of the script, but viciously so on. Also glistening is British musical comedy star Triplett, who gives us a Mrs. Mister (with vestiges of the Mrs. Lovett she recently played at Barrow Street) so fully rounded that we can’t take our eyes off her.
Pulver—who played Louise in the Imelda Staunton Gypsy in London—holds our attention in the central role of the street-walking Moll, and gives a compelling reading of that “Nickel Under the Foot” from which the musical sprang. Standing out among the others is Rema Webb (of Escape to Margaritaville and The Book of Mormon), who gives a stunning rendition of Blitzstein’s powerful “Joe Worker.”
Doyle and CSC do not reveal The Cradle Will Rock to be an all-time masterwork, no. But it is a compelling production of a compelling piece of writing. Blitzstein, who was murdered in 1964 in what we now call a “hate crime,” would no doubt be amused but proud of how timely his 80-year-old musical is today, with its talk of “Ku Kluxers hidin’ up there in the cradle of the Liberty Committee.”
Proud, yes; but not in the least surprised.
The Cradle Will Rock opened April 3, 2019, at the Classic Stage Company and runs through May 19. Tickets and information: classicstage.org
