Patti LuPone by Patti Lupone

Author:Patti Lupone [LuPone, Patti]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 978-0-307-46075-2
Publisher: Crown Publishing Group
Published: 2010-09-14T04:00:00+00:00

10

The Cradle Will Rock, Les Misérables, LBJ, A Sicilian in Sicily

1985–1987

“I Dreamed a Dream.”

PHOTOGRAPH BY MICHAEL LE POER TRENCH © CAMERON MACKINTOSH LTD

The summer of 1985 found me in London, reprising my roles as The Moll and Sister Mister in Marc Blitzstein’s play The Cradle Will Rock. As The Moll, I sing what may be the best-known song from the show, “The Nickel Under Your Foot.” This was the second time we’d presented it; the first time had been two years earlier at the American Place Theater in Manhattan.

The cast that first time was made up entirely of alumni from The Acting Company. I’d been surrounded by familiar faces—David Schramm, Mary Lou Rosato, and Henry Stram in particular. John Houseman directed us. For him, The Cradle was very much a sentimental journey, and not just because we’d all been part of his repertory company.

To give you a brief history of this musical, in the fall of 1936, John and Orson Welles formed WPA Project 891, also known as the Classical Unit of the Federal Theatre. Their third production was The Cradle Will Rock by Marc Blitzstein, described by its author as “a Labor Opera—composed in a style that falls somewhere between realism, romance, vaudeville, comic-strip, Gilbert and Sullivan, Bertolt Brecht, and agit-prop.” Someone in Congress concluded that Marc Blitzstein had written a leftist, antiestablishment, even communist play using taxpayer money. It had to be stopped, and with the collusion of Actors’ Equity, they proceeded to shut it down. Three days before opening night in New York City, a dozen WPA security guards took up residence at the Maxine Elliott Theater to ensure that the costumes, props, sets, musical score, and the leading man’s toupee did not leave the theatre, since everything was considered government property.

Welles and Houseman barricaded themselves inside the ladies’ powder room, the only room off-limits to the government, and scrambled to put the show on despite everything. Defying the authorities and with unbelievable cunning, they secured an empty theatre twenty-one blocks uptown from the Maxine Elliott, and rallied the opening night audience to follow them, gathering more people along the way. The house was filled to the rafters. Alone onstage, Marc Blitzstein sat at a piano and played the opening chords. Although the cast had been forbidden by Actors’ Equity to perform onstage, they had not been forbidden to perform in the house, so they played the scenes in different and unexpected parts of the theatre, with the stage managers finding and illuminating them with handheld spotlights. It was a huge success. John and Orson were subsequently fired for insubordination.

It was this version that we presented at the American Place Theater almost half a century later. The only thing onstage was a piano and black chairs. Before the performance, John Houseman, now eighty-three, stood in front of the audience and told his very moving personal account of the turbulent opening night of The Cradle Will Rock. The play itself is the story of an industrial town in the grip of Mr.

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