Cradle Will Rock at Classic Stage Company: The Workers of Yesteryear

Nothing says worker like hair tied up in Rosie the Riveter do-rag. The Classic Stage Company’s revival of Marc Blitzstein’s 1937 song cycle, Cradle Will Rock, hits a proletarian note. The talented ensemble, led by Tony Yazbeck as Larry Foreman, made up of steel workers, cops, newsmen, church officials, or factory owners, attempt or resist unionizing. Not your typical subject for a musical, this leftist cry was very much reflective of between the wars issues.

The genre of “art song,” with composers Ned Rorem, Paul Bowles, Blitzstein, and others using song whimsically or politically, was quintessentially American. At CSC, with only a piano (played by four actors) accompanying, characters emerge, all in service to Mr. Mister (David Garrison). This way, a lot gets rationalized, thrashed out, manipulated into “fake news” in song.

Not that there’s an attempt in director John Doyle’s conception to make reference to the current regime, or labor practices for that matter. A woman machinist (Rema Webb) sings out, her injured husband maligned as a drunk; yes, she has to suck up the unfairness, as everyone lies beholden to Mr. Mister. Rather, this ninety-minute musical drama plays as a tableau of the ills of capitalism from an era we wish could have been more just. This somber, worth seeing production may have you thinking: Isn’t it great that things are so much better now?