The Cradle Will Rock
Who wouldn’t be excited by the prospect of a full production of The Cradle Will Rock, Marc Blitzstein’s legendary jazz opera and socialist cause celebre? Initially suppressed by the Federal Theatre Project (which had also commissioned it) on the evening of its 1937 premiere, the show has been known to most of us chiefly through accounts in biographies of its producers Orson Welles and John Houseman, and in the eponymous 1999 film by Tim Robbins. With a combination of bravery and commercial acumen, Theatre Ten Ten has a production now on the boards, and it’s worth a look if for nothing more than the history lesson.
Created during the depths of the Great Depression, it seems fitting and appropriate to have revived this quirky work at a time of similar economic upheaval. Nonetheless, politically and artistically, it remains a museum piece. To put it charitably, Blitzstein was no Gershwin – neither a George nor an Ira. With the benefit of hindsight, The Cradle Will Rock reads like an attempt to graft Brecht and Weill’s daring theatrical innovations onto Clifford Odets’ homegrown agit-prop. The Fat Cat is our boogey-man here, and the answer is, what? Unions! But this is 2010, we know better than that, market crash notwithstanding. Not only are unions capable of corruption as heinous as any monopoly or cartel, but so are socialist governments. We may not like it when The Cradle’s cartoon villain Mr. Mister (Bill Newhall) buys off the church, the press, the arts and the medical and academic establishments…on the other hand, 73 years later, we also don’t like it when labor unions and big government push us around either. The very prescription the play seems to offer as an answer – a “closed shop” – gives your correspondent the creeping willies. I’m in the theatre. Your vaunted closed shop happens to be closed TO ME.
Plotwise the thing is a sprawling mess. We acknowledge that this is Epic theatre, with its own requirements. But even Brecht (who had encouraged Blitzstein in the project) had grappled with (and mostly solved) the problem of presenting large historical movements on stage, generally by making some concessions to traditional taste. We know, for example, that the heroine of St. Joan of the Stockyards is…St. Joan. The closest thing to a hero in The Cradle is one Larry Foreman (Josh Powell), who doesn’t emerge until the second act, mostly to confront Mr. Mister about the workplace death of one Joe Worker. Yes: Joe Worker. Before this, we have been exposed to the systematic corruption to a group of community leaders who now form a “Liberty Committee”, and the framing of a Polish immigrant for an anarchist bombing. To tie it all together at the end, we are directly addressed by the cast, Waiting for Lefty style, to go out and change things. In the manner of whom? Mao, Castro, Pol Pot? Jimmy Hoffa? Are those unfair examples? What about depicting all businessmen as ruthless robber barons?
I still say Theatre Ten Ten did a good thing in reviving the play. Theatre is supposed to make us think and debate, and this is the very sort of play that forces the issue. Furthermore, they excel in their production, by doing what they do best. At a formal level, they do justice to the material. Director David Fuller has given the production a stark, Brechtian reality: no set, a staging in the round, a single piano player for accompianament who does double duty reading the stage directions. The cast are all gung ho in their parts. Stand-outs include Josh Powell, a kinetic performer and great singer who brings the agitator Larry Foreman to life; and Tessa Faye who relishes her role as Mrs. Mister, the seductive philanthropic manipulator of churchmen and artists alike, a character New Yorkers will recognize only too well. These and their castmates do their utmost to make the show soar in the few spots where Blitzstein the composer allows himself to inject a playful note into the didactic proceedings. If the cradle rocks at all here it is due to their efforts much more than the rather limited author’s.
The Cradle will Rock is at Theatre Ten Ten through March 14. For info and tickets, go here.
