Old Musical Play in Manhattan, Jan. 5, 1948

The Cradle Will Rock (by Marc Blitzstein; produced by Michael Myerberg) had trouble, ten years ago, finding a stage; Washington, for reasons never explained, ordered the original WPA production to "postpone" its opening. But once Orson Welles took it to Broadway, The Cradle had no trouble finding an audience. For if brash and biased, Marc Blitzstein's "play in music" about Steeltown's big bad boss, cringing sycophants and exulting strikers had zip and the Zeitgeist in its favor. It also had a good deal of theatrical novelty: a sceneryless stage that antedated Our...

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