"How to Survive an Election: Laugh With 'POTUS'"

by Gabriela Furtado Coutinho

[Avid theatergoers are quite familiar with political plays, like Gore Vidal’s 1960 The Best Man (revived on Broadway as Gore Vidal’s The Best Man in 2012; see “Best Man” by Kirk Woodward, 19 July 2012, and “In Memoriam: James Earl Jones (1931-2024), Part 2,” 25 September 2024), which is literally about politics and politicians, or Emily Mann’s Execution of Justice (1983; see “Performing Fact: The Documentary Drama,” 9 October 2009), which examines politically sensitive issues.

[But Gabriela Furtado Coutinho is here considering a play we can look at as therapy—laughter is the best medicine, as the saying goes (from the Book of Proverbs, popularized by Reader's Digest)—for recovering from today’s politics (specifically, 5 November two weeks back).  

[That’s how Furtado Coutinho sees POTUS, the 2022 political farce.  So have many spectators, it seems.

[This article was posted on American Theatre’s website on 28 October 2024.  It didn’t appear in the magazine’s print edition.  (All dates in the article, unless otherwise noted, are 2024.)]

Selina Fillinger’s popular farce about women taking control of the White House hits different this fall.

Selina Fillinger didn’t set out to write a play about electoral politics. But events in the current presidential election have transformed how audiences receive her play POTUS, Or Behind Every Great Dumbass Are Seven Women Trying to Keep Him Alive, a farce about women having to step in for an incapacitated president. Sound familiar? POTUS, among the most-produced plays in the country for the second year running, was scheduled at 11 TCG member theatres well before Vice President Kamala Harris advanced to the top of the Democratic ticket in the aftermath of President Biden’s June debate performance. 

[Theatre Communications Group (TCG), the publisher of American Theatre, is a nonprofit membership service organization that promotes professional nonprofit theater in the United States. Its services and publications focus exclusively on its member theaters, though its publications are available generally.]

Of those productions, 10 are programmed in September and October, before Election Day on Nov. 5. (One brave theatre, Zoetic Stage in Miami, has slated it for Jan. 9-26, 2025.) There are a few tried-and-true ways to cope with election jitters: inhaling ice cream straight from the carton, obsessing over bad TV, piercing the ceiling with existential gaze every morning and night. POTUS has been offering a communal alternative: shared laughter. Said Suzanne Tidwell, house services manager at Trinity Rep ([Trinity Repertory Theatre, Providence, Rhode Island] where POTUS ran Sept. 5-Oct. 27), of reactions to the show, “I’ve heard it repeated over and over: ‘Thank you. We needed that tonight. We really need to laugh.’”

Tidwell recalled the experience of debate night in particular, “They were quick to respond to every joke. They chose to be at the theatre that night instead of watching the debate. It became a sanctuary.”

[The second presidential debate (Donald Trump vs. Kamala Harris) took place in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on 10 September at 9:00-10:30 p.m. (EDT).]

Artistic directors and house managers shared with me how this sentiment is ringing true for theatregoers across the country, in spite of the abysmal divides among Americans. The play’s hilarious confrontation of power, patriarchy, and “the pursuit of sanity” already felt timely when it opened on Broadway in 2022 and ran through the overturning of Roe v. Wade. 

[POTUS opened for a limited run at the Shubert Theatre on Broadway on 27 April 2022 after 13 previews starting on 14 April. (For those not familiar with the acronym, 'POTUS' is the common shorthand designation for “President of the United States,” referring to the current executive.) The show closed on 14 August 2022 after 126 regular performances. It was playwright Selina Fillinger’s Broadway début (and only her second play presented in New York City).  

[The production was directed by Susan Stroman (in her non-musical Broadway début), with scenic design by Beowulf Boritt, costume design by Linda Cho, lighting design by Sonoyo Nishikawa, and sound design by Jessica Paz. It starred Lilli Cooper (Chris), Lea DeLaria (Bernadette), Rachel Dratch (Stephanie), Julianne Hough (Dusty), Suzy Nakamura (Jean), Julie White (Harriet), and Vanessa Williams (Margaret).

[POTUS received 2022 Tony nominations for Best Performance by an Actress in a Featured Role in a Play for Rachel Dratch and Julie White and Best Scenic Design of a Play and was also nominated for 2022 Drama League Awards for Outstanding Production of a Play and Distinguished Performance Awards for Dratch and White.

[The show got mixed reviews from the New York Times and the New York Post, but the ensemble cast was generally praised for their comedy work by Variety, the Washington Post, and other outlets. Show-Score, the theater review aggregator, gave POTUS a score of 85%, with 92% positive reviews.

[The U.S. Supreme Court decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization that overturned Roe v. Wade (22 January 1973) was issued on 24 June 2022.]

But it feels especially bracing right now to watch an all-femme cast avert disaster at the White House.

Take Trinity Rep’s first impulse toward the script: As artistic director Curt Columbus put it, they “picked it as an antidote to two old white men talking at each other. Then two weeks before rehearsal, one of the old white men dropped out and the world changed. It was such a different environment in the rehearsal room.”

At [Baltimore] Maryland’s Everyman Theatre, where the play ran Sept. 1-29, associate artistic director and POTUS actor Tuyết Thị Phạm said her rehearsal room also buzzed with “a shot of adrenaline” when it became clear that [Vice President Kamala] Harris would be the Democratic nominee.

The day that news broke, Curious Theatre Company [Denver] artistic director Jada Suzanne Dixon drove through picturesque Colorado to rehearsals for POTUS, which would play Sept. 7-Oct. 13. She wondered, “Do we need to do anything different? That was the question I was mulling over. By the time I got into the rehearsal room, there was this buzz and energy in the room. I said to everyone, ‘The beautiful thing about this play is it’s already on the page. Yes, the world is doing something different. Yet we don’t have to do anything different with our storytelling, because it is already here: women’s rights, feminism, and intersectionality.’”

Some productions responded to the historical significance of Harris’s campaign with subtle nods, adding Beyoncé’s “Freedom” [2016; from Lemonade] to the bow music or to the “Bitch Beats” playlist referenced in the show. Tracking such changes was self-professed theatre enthusiast “Broadway Bekah” Walsh, who has traveled around the country since the play premiered on Broadway to catch as many productions as possible. So far she’s seen POTUS 34 times at 20 theatres.

[A musical bow is an ancient musical instrument that can be picked, struck, or bowed to create sound.

[On her website, Susan Stroman notes: “As part of the plot, Harriet encourages Stephanie to listen to a playlist called ‘Bitch Beats’ – a compilation of songs that are the quintessence of female power, like Rihanna’s ‘Breakin’ Dishes’ or Bikini Kill’s ‘Rebel Girl’. She motivates Stephanie to find her confidence by dancing out a series of Power Poses.”

[Bekah Walsh, who describes herself as “theater obsessed,” is a theater writer and influencer from Baltimore, Maryland. In August 2023, after having seen POTUS twice on Broadway (see above) before its limited run ended, took off on what she dubbed the “POTUS Trail,” during which she traveled around the U.S. and Canada to see as many regional productions as she could. Starting at the Laboratory Theater of Florida in Fort Myers (4-19 August 2023), she posted her experiences online on several different websites, ending her trail in May 2024 with the production at the Sylvan Adams Theatre of the Segal Centre for Performing Arts in Montreal, Quebec, Canada (12 May-2 June 2024).]

Walsh said she’s watched the tone of the play go “from a place of commiseration, laughing about being stuck represented by men, to suddenly having hope, to having the potential of a woman in this position.” Few things hit the same, she said, in every production: Some have leaned more into the ending’s dramatic edge, while some went further with the farce throughout. Many were staged in thrust, Arena‘s [Washington, D.C.’s Arena Stage; 13 October-12 November 2023] was in the round, and Everyman’s had actors running through the audience (while they improved clever DMV-specific references). 

[“DMV” is a local appellation which stands for the “District of Columbia, Maryland, Virginia.”]

But across all the productions she’s seen since July, one line has jumped out: “Why isn’t she president?”

Fillinger anticipated these nuances but worked to ensure that the script would remain evergreen. The dynamics in the play, she said, “translate to any institution, office, or household.” At any moment, she said, “People are going to project it onto whatever the electoral moment is.” There’s been a “breadth of interpretation.” At one opening, she was especially caught off guard when, at the end, an audience member exclaimed, “Nikki Haley for President!” Laughing at the memory, she said, “But I hope that people can also see what’s happening underneath, because that’s where the real work begins.”

“Whoever is president, it is going to be on us, on the people, to make our voices clear, and that will always be the case. Patriarchy and white supremacy exist across parties, and there are fundamental issues with our democracy,” Fillinger concluded.

All the theatremakers I interviewed about POTUS said it brought in new audiences and fuller houses than expected. Even in Tampa [Florida], where audiences are more conservative than in other cities where the show has played, the turnout “cracked our all-time Top 10 list. The community really embraced it,” said David M. Jenkins, artistic director of Jobsite Theater, where it ran Sept. 4-29.

Indeed, the nonpartisan play has proven its expansive resonance not only in the number of U.S. productions over the past year, but also in how well it translated abroad. Back in April, the Deutsches Schauspielhaus production in Hamburg, Germany played with a compelling postmodern take.

[The German translation of POTUS by Nico Rabenald (Die Schattenpräsidentinnen – “The shadow presidents”; nb: the word Präsidentin in German means a female president), directed by Claudia Bauer, premièred at the Deutsches Schauspielhaus (German Playhouse) on 12 April. It ran until 31 May.]

Still, Curt Colombus of Trinity Rep reminded me of a sobering U.S. reality: “It might be harder to laugh after Nov. 5.” That’s why he—and presumably most other theatres—steered clear of programming the play post-election.

Zoetic Stage will chart that great unknown as the team revs up to tell the story around Inauguration Day, regardless of the election outcome. Instead of a POTUS fall slot, they went with Martin McDonagh’s [2003; Broadway: 2005] The Pillowman [24 October-10 November] for spooky season, which “Miamians really get into,” said stage manager Vanessa McCloskey. But it’s not all innocent thrills: She and Zoetic artistic director Stuart Meltzer shared they were excited about Pillowman’s cautionary, unfortunately relevant depiction of a totalitarian government.

“Miami gets a lot of election exhaustion,” said McCloskey. As a former resident, I can vouch for this: I’ve personally witnessed political tension rift even the closest of Latine families living in South Florida. The political proves personal, with trauma from citizens’ original homelands informing voting decisions in this heavily immigrant and first-generation-American community.

Meltzer elaborated, “In our community, we weren’t sure how POTUS would be received amid that tension” in the run-up to Election Day. But by the time January comes around, they reasoned, “The decision will have been made,” as McCloskey put it, “and there will be more space to laugh together.”

Creatives hold their breath to see not only how the election will turn out, but how the play will feel as a result. 

While artists may swing the energetic pendulum of public discourse and crave revolution, they still live in context, the Florida productions reminded me. Jobsite’s Jenkins employed intentionality similar to Zoetic’s with a politically diverse city. The goal in Tampa, Jenkins said, was not to alienate audiences before they even came into the theatre.

Other theatres around the country, meanwhile, marketed the material’s edgy side, from language and slur reclamation to protest. At Chicago’s Steppenwolf [Theatre Company; 26 October-3 December 2023] last November, for instance, the dramatic final moment saw Harriet (played by force of nature Sandra Marquez) flicking a cigarette butt onto the American flag, which went up in smoke. Tampa had to tread in the opposite direction.

“We truly avoided even using the term ‘feminist farce,’” said Jenkins. “It’s a trigger, and the work does speak for itself. Sometimes a theatre might want to prescribe a reaction—we feel a need to stress the importance of what we’re doing. But sometimes it’s not conducive to bringing in an audience. So we relied on the experience; we talked about ‘girls night out’ and levity.” A few patrons, he said, sent angry emails after seeing the show, but they were a minority. Cheers were heard at key lines most nights. But when it came to Dusty’s, “Affordable, safe reproductive health care is a basic human right,” at a time wherein Amendment 4, Right to Abortion Initiative is on the ballot, the room pulsated with a different kind of energy. 

Observed Jenkins, “You could feel that people wanted to respond in a positive way, but at the same time, they weren’t laughing or applauding; there was some alternate energy. As if that moment crosses the line too much into our reality. As a producer and theatremaker, I appreciated that, having this mixed company sit in discomfort together.”

Surprisingly, Bekah Walsh said, at performances she attended around the country she noticed the most intermission walkouts not in Florida, Texas, or Tennessee, but in California. “You could see some seats were emptier at this one performance, which I thought was funny, being in a liberal area,” she recalled. “Maybe it was just the audience that day. You never know.” 

You really never know. “Maybe personally I had some nervousness around how the audience might receive it,” said Jada Suzanne Dixon, even at edgy Curious Theatre Company in Denver [7 September-13 October]. “But then there were stories—like, someone came with a friend who lives in the neighborhood, blocks away, and had never been to our theatre. And they shared, ‘I’m going to become a subscriber.’ This play opened up doors for us.”

Each theatre had its own wraparound programming, from voting information to pantsuit nights, but one that stood out to me was Trinity Rep’s “Femme Night” [11 October]. That iteration opened up dialogue about the rarity of femme-centered professional spaces. Suzanne Tidwell, Trinity Rep house services manager, shared with me how impactful it was to her, working the event.

“I’m usually busy and focused on logistics,” she said. “But I looked around at the lobby with the pre-show reception and realized I was in a space entirely filled with femme-identifying audience members, board members, and staff members. I saw this beautiful space to feel seen. As a woman of a certain age, when I started doing theatre, I was the first female to have been on the technical crew at my university. To be able to look around at the femme-identifying lighting ops and sound ops and run crew and know we’re doing the work of reclaiming our language and vocabulary and space has been a really moving experience for me.”

Earlier this year, I wrote a piece that extrapolated on my complicated relationship with mirrors, with looking on my femme and Latine body. As each staff member involved with POTUS productions described mothers bringing their daughters and daughters bringing their mothers to this show, I heard their glimmering hope. The image of Kamala Harris’s niece looking up at her during the DNC came to mind.

[The first link above takes readers to an article, “Tomorrow’s Tamoras and Titanias” by Furtado Coutinho, the author of “How to Survive an Election.” It’s posted on this blog in “Theater Education & Training, Part 3” (9 October 2024).]

The women depicted in this play are complicated, imperfect, messy, and complicit, and the fact that they’re allowed to be so gives me hope that we as a country can have more complicated, imperfect, messy conversations with one another about our systems of power. One by one, mirrors transform and small glass ceilings break, as femmes of every age watch POTUS’s women live large. We recognize the largest parts of ourselves. Dark, decisive, daring.

Fillinger has said that conservatives think the POTUS in question is Clinton, and liberals think it’s Trump. But that offstage body was never the invisible matter that mattered. Close your eyes and see it: Across the country, across many lines of division, we are all laughing at the same play. Fillinger might have given us the one POTUS we can all agree on. I consider it a win.

[Originally from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and raised in the vibrant immigrant community of South Florida, Gabriela Furtado Coutinho is a U.S.-based actor, writer, director, cultural strategist, and graduate of Northwestern University (Theatre/English Creative Writing BA).  In addition to now guest lecturing at Northwestern, she serves as Chicago Associate Editor of the Theatre Communications Group’s American Theatre magazine.  

[In addition to previous work with various Chicago collectives, as well as The Kennedy Center in their theater education/TYA division and Emmys/Television Academy in development of new kids’ TV, Furtado Coutinho has experience in developing new work, curating tangible care practices, writing in lyrical verse, and embodying power classical roles.

[On ROT, Coutinho’s writing appears in “Tomorrow’s Tamoras and Titanias” as referenced above and “‘Wish You Were Here: A Radical Access Roundtable,’” 6 July 2024.

[Born in Berkeley, California, in 1994, Salina Fillinger grew up in Eugene, Oregon.  Working one summer at Ashland’s Oregon Shakespeare Festival, she saw a production of Julius Caesar and started to envision a life in the arts.

[She left Eugene to study acting at Northwestern University in Chicago and took her first playwriting class in her sophomore year.  Her teacher encouraged her to enter the university’s Agnes Nixon Festival, established by the creator of the classic soap operas One Life to Live and All My Children.  Fillinger’s play, inspired by a headline about a man who walked into a bar and swallowed a pickled human toe used as a gimmick in drinks, was selected.

[The student dramatist went on to win the 2015 national Judith Barlow Prize for an original one-act play that was inspired by the work of a historic woman playwright.  In Fillinger’s case, it was 1928’s Machinal by Sophie Treadwell (1885-1970) and Fillinger’s play was Three Landings and a Fire Escape, about three women who become improbable friends and help one another through difficulties, one of whom summons the fortitude to take on the troubles.

[Fillinger morphed from a would-be actor to a writer, and in 2016, she heard the broadcast of presidential candidate Donald Trump “bragging about grabbing women by their genitals.  I, in turn, sat down to write a farce.”  By 2017, she had written POTUS, Or Behind Every Great Dumbass Are Seven Women Trying to Keep Him Alive, a farce in which the President of the United States inadvertently spins a verbal gaffe into a worldwide crisis and seven brilliant and stressed-out women on whom he relies risk everything, including their sanity, to keep him out of trouble.

[“The play is highly political, but it is not partisan. Republicans think it’s about Bill Clinton, Democrats think it’s about Donald Trump,” says the playwright.  Nevertheless, she had some difficulty selling the script—but “in 2022, well into Biden’s first term, POTUS premiered on Broadway.”  It became the third most-produced play of 2023—and remained on the list in 2024 at number seven.]

'The Cradle Will Rock' (Classic Stage Company)

After having seen the 2013 concert rendering of Marc Blitzstein’s agitprop “play in music,” The Cradle Will Rock, I wanted to see a “full production” of it.  So when the Classic Stage Company announced its production for this spring, I signed up.  What CSC is presenting, directed by the company’s artistic director, John Doyle, isn’t a concert version of Cradle, but it’s still pared down—even without Doyle’s hollowed-out staging.  (Doyle also “designed” the set, with the assistance of David L. Arsenault.)  I guess I’ll still have to wait for a production of what Blitzstein originally intended: two acts with a full set, costumes, and orchestrations.

In my 1 August 2013 blog report (https://rickontheater.blogspot.com/2013/08/the-cradle-will-rock.html), I provided a background of the play, particularly its abortive and theater history-making début on 16 June 1937.  There’s also a wrap-up of the play’s production history up to the 21st century.  I’m not going to repeat that here, so I suggest interested readers click on the link above and skim the old report.  I’ll focus on the new revival in the East Village.

First, the details of the presentation: Doyle’s revival is the first New York City production of Cradle since the presentation by Encores! Off-Center—a summer concert series for Off-Broadway musicals—at the New York City Center in Mid-town.  The CSC revival started previews at the Lynn F. Angelson Theater on East 13th Street just west of 3rd Avenue on 21 March 2019 and opened on 3 April; it’s scheduled to close on 19 May.  My friend Diana and I caught the Thursday evening performance at 7 p.m. on 4 April. 

My earlier report also includes a plot rundown, so I won’t add a full one here.  The Cradle Will Rock is set in Steeltown, USA.  Mr. Mister’s hand-picked, anti-union Liberty Committee, which includes the town’s leading citizens—Dr. Specialist (Eddie Cooper), Editor Daily (Ken Barnett), President Prexy (Barnett), and Reverend Salvation (Benjamin Eakeley), and, representing the arts, violinist Yasha (Ian Lowe) and artist Dauber (Rema Webb)—have all been arrested by the police by mistake, having been ordered by Mr. Mister (David Garrison), the steel mogul who owns the mill, most of the company town, and pretty much everyone in it, to roust anyone rousing the pro-union rabble. 

Another prisoner, Harry Druggist (Tony Yazbeck), explains to Moll (Lara Pulver), a young streetwalker, what the Liberty Committee is and how it was established.  (Blitzstein wasn’t subtle about alluding to such big wigs of 1930s America as evangelist Billy Sunday, newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst, and the Du Pont family of tycoons.)  The play then unfolds as a series of back stories, shifting from the courtroom where all the prisoners await night court and scenes from the recent past that reveal how Mr. Mister cowed everyone in town and bought them all off.

Everyone in town takes Mr. Mister’s cash, which he literally throws around in wads to overcome any resistance from, say, the church, academia, or the press.  For instance, to keep Junior Mister (Cooper), the money man’s slacker son (echoes of Eric Trump, d’ya think?) out of trouble, Mr. Mister bribes Editor Daily to hire the boob as a correspondent—in Hawaii!  Dauber and Yasha mock Mrs. Mister (Sally Ann Triplett) and her insipid artistic taste; nonetheless, they take her money and revel in how much they love doing so.  Sister Mister (Kara Mikula), the tycoon’s daughter, is a privileged party girl and loves to spend daddy’s dough on sexy clothes (not seen in the CSC staging, by the way) and eye-candy beaux.

Only incorruptible Larry Foreman (Yazbeck), a stalwart young labor organizer, resists the pull of Mr. Mister’s bribery.  Foreman has also been arrested and exhorts the other prisoners to support labor unions and to rise up and defeat the capitalist robber barons. One day soon, he warns Mr. Mister. “the cradle will rock” and the cushy capitalist cocoon will fall.

(By the way, CSC seems to be trying out a very annoying new practice: no printed programs.  It’s on line, but not in the theater—except on your smart phone.  Boy, I hope that doesn’t catch on!  I keep mine—since I came to New York City in ‘74—and I often find myself using them for reference later.)

                                                                                        

The original Federal Theatre Project cast at the nearly-abortive première was about 17 actors (covering about 36 roles, many of them bits; there are seven principal singing characters) and subsequent Broadway revivals (’37 and ’47) cast as many as 35 actors; Sam Gold, who directed the Encores! concert, pared that down to 14.  Doyle’s gone even further, staging his revival with 10 actors—four of whom play the sole piano as well (they rotate as accompanist).  Gold’s production had no set, but Doyle’s cast also shifts the “scenery.”  (I’ll get to those quotation marks shortly—the ones above concerning the set design as well.) 

Blitzstein wrote Cradle for a full orchestra of a minimum of 25 players, though it was débuted after the historic shut-down with just the composer playing the piano.  Subsequent productions have often tried to emulate this event in various ways (including productions with two or three pianos), and Gold used a 14-piece orchestra on a large platform upstage from the actors.  Doyle, however, not only reverts to the single upright piano accompaniment (the music supervisor is Greg Jarrett), but has four of the actors (Barnett, Eakeley, Lowe, Mikula) alternate at the keyboard even as they shout lines from the script’s dialogue, backs to the audience or over their shoulders, from the bench.  (This tactic sort of operates in concert with the cast-as-stagehands decision.) 

The Angelson’s not built for musicals, and the acoustics are lousy.  The lyrics at CSC were hard to understand a lot of the time, drowned out by the piano or just lost in the flyspace.  (It’s not great for dialogue, either, but not as bad—and there’s less competition from the piano as well.)

(Gold’s Encores! concert presentation, which ran an  hour and 45 minutes, was performed as a series of discrete songs, like the score of any traditional musical.  What I learned at CSC, where Doyle trimmed the script to 90 intermissionless minutes, is that Blitzstein’s score is almost entirely sung through, with what seems like recitative linking dialogue to songs and songs to songs.  The play’s not an opera—although several opera companies have presented it—but Blitzstein did subtitle Cradle “A Play In Music,” not, you’ll notice, “A Play With Music.”)

As set designer, Doyle has split the difference between no set at all (Encores! and the 1937 Virginia Theatre première) and the full set the composer conceived and which was used in the New York City Opera mounting in 1960 (ironically, at the same City Center as the Encores! concert in 2013).  His “design” for CSC’s small, square space in the Angelson consists of small yellow metal drums (containing industrial waste, maybe?) which the actors carry around and reset in different configurations for each scene.  (A bunch are arranged in a cross in the middle of the acting area for a church scene, for example, and rearranged as a soda-fountain counter in Harry Druggist’s shop.  Sort of like cylindrical Legos.) 

This isn’t so much “scenery” in any common sense—hence all those quotation marks—but I guess, in the broadest sense of the term, it’s a visual environment for the actors to play against.  Not that it evokes “steel” or “factory,” but I suppose it suggests “labor,” considering how much the actors heft the drums around.  Except for wads of greenbacks that Mr. Mister tosses around, the barrels are the only props Doyle uses in the show.

Overhead is a spider’s web of telephone or telegraph wires; I only call it that because the wires all seem to emanate from a tall, wooden pole with cross pieces that looks like an old-fashioned telephone pole.  What it’s supposed to signify or symbolize, I have no idea.  One reviewer observed, “In revolution, those who rule the airwaves rule all,” but no mention of this notion or anything similar occurs in the production.  (The closest Blitzstein comes is his implication that Editor Daily and his newspaper is for sale to Mr. Mister when he tells the tycoon, “You’ve only got to hint whatever’s fit to print; If something’s wrong with it, why then we’ll print to fit.  For whichever side will pay the best.”)

The Angelson’s house, which is reconfigured from production to production (it was a compete arena for the Spring 2018 revival of Tennessee Williams’s Summer and Smoke), is arranged as a thrust with spectators on the north, east, and west sides of the playing area; the south side is the “backstage” area where the piano is and where the actors hang out when not on stage.  Some dialogue, as well as singing, includes performers in the off-stage area, and as I’ve said, the piano-players deliver some lines while playing. 

Only David Garrison, as Mr. Mister, plays just a single character; some actors have as many as three roles, plus incidental parts.  Actors sometimes switch roles while on stage and without changes in costume or other visual or vocal clues, it’s sometimes hard to realize which character is talking or singing.  Everyone is dressed in factory-worker garb (designed by Ann Hould-Ward), so there’s also no distinction between the one-percenters and the laborers.  (Ironically, this is the reverse of the Encores! concert version in which everyone, workers and toffs alike, wore evening clothes.  I have no inkling why either director chose these homogenized costume schemes.) 

The performance starts stealthily—no noticeable change in lighting, no sound cue, nothing—as first one then small groups of actors wander into the performing area and cross to the south side neutral area.  Some carry a drum on their shoulder and as the cast assembles, some stop in gaggles in the acting area, which is essentially empty except for the shadows from the tangle of wires above.  (The lighting is designed by Jane Cox and Tess James.)

The first scene, which begins in the off-stage space, shows a cop rousting a bunch of citizens as laborite demonstrators as they protest that they’re actually Mr. Mister’s Liberty Community and that the cops are there to arrest the worker’s demonstrating for the union.  (If I hadn’t already seen a version of Cradle, I might have had a hard time figuring out what was happening, given that everyone was dressed like a steel worker.)

Though some well-known actors have appeared in productions (Howard Da Silva, Will Geer, Jack Albertson, Alfred Drake, Vivian Vance, Jerry Orbach, Lauri Peters, Patti LuPone, Randle Mell, Tammy Grimes), The Cradle Will Rock is the ultimate ensemble play, so I’m going to critique the performance in toto.  That works out rather well, since no single performance stood out at CSC in any case.

Timesman Jesse Green called the production “wan,” but that’s not the word I’d have chosen.  The performances were all right, but I remember the Encores! concert being both funnier and more forcefully agitprop.  I’d say, Doyle’s performance style was too soft-pedaled, as if the director were afraid today’s right wing would point and shout “Socialism!” and shut them down.  From Garrison’s Mr. Mister to Yazbeck’s Larry Foreman, not one of the characters came off as staunchly defending his or her position.  Not even Rema Webb, as Ella Hammer, whose machinist husband was injured in a suspicious accident at the plant, sings “Joe Worker” like the show-stopping number I remember from the 2013 concert. 

With today’s record of union-busting and the growing income gap between workers and bosses, not to forget the disparity between men’s pay and women’s for the same work and the current administration’s drive to strip away safety regulations (not to mention health care), The Cradle Will Rock should speak as loudly to a 2019 audience as it did to one in 1937—and I’d think that actors and directors, who are also members of unions, would feel this as intensely as any citizen.  But Doyle and his cast seem to have put a lid on the expression of strong feelings.  Perhaps they were over-Brechtifying the presentation—eschewing any emotional connection between the actors and their characters.  (Blitzstein dedicated Cradle to Bertolt Brecht, “first because I think him the most admirable theatre-writer of our time; secondly because an extended conversation with him was partly responsible for writing the piece.”) 

The press coverage of The Cradle Will Rock was middling, especially for a historically significant and seldom-produced play—and so was the critical response.  As of 11 April, Show-Score tallied 28 published notices with an average score of only 65.  Fifty percent of the reviews were positive, 32% were mixed, and 18% were negative.  Show-Score’s highest rating was one 90 for the website Musical Theater Review followed by two 85’s for Carole Di Tosti and StageBiz.com; the lowest score was a 35 for Talkin’ Broadway, backed by two 40’s for TheaterMania and New York Stage Review.  My review round-up will cover 20 published notices.

In the Wall Street Journal, Terry Teachout declared, “Theatrical politics being what they are, it was both inevitable that ‘The Cradle Will Rock,’ Marc Blitzstein’s 1937 pro-labor musical, would receive a major off-Broadway production in the Age of Trump, and desirable that it is being done by Classic Stage Company.”  Teachout added that director Doyle “is exceptionally good at staging small-scale musical revivals, and he knows exactly what to do with shows like this.”  He assessed the production as “spare, vital, perfectly legible and almost entirely satisfying.”  The Journalist did “have a caveat, and it is, alas, a substantial one:  This production is sung without amplification, and Mr. Doyle has cast actors who can sing rather than singers who can act.” 

Teachout observed that “it’s important that you be able to hear the lyrics in order to follow the action, and you will often find that hard to do.”  He further contended that Blitzstein’s “red-hot Stalinis[m] . . . is what keeps ‘Cradle’ from being the American ‘Threepenny Opera’ that Blitzstein longed to write: He shared Bertolt Brecht’s politics but lacked his rich dramatic imagination.”  In contrast, “The score is another matter.  Not only are Blitzstein’s clear-cut tunes full of off-center harmonies that light up every phrase, but his lyrics are as sharp as a switchblade.”  In conclusion, Teachout asserted, “The songs are what has kept ‘The Cradle Will Rock’ alive, and I expect they’ll keep on doing so for a long time to come.”

In the New York Times, Green expressed the opinion that:

musical theater is last on the list of mediums suited to agitprop.  At its best, it is too complex, too cosmopolitan and too pleasure-seeking to pass loyalty tests. What goes into the machinery as revolutionary rage comes out as “Les Miz.” 

“And yet there’s ‘The Cradle Will Rock,’” continued Green, which its 1930s audience “would have understood . . . as a leftist rallying cry and a satire of unfettered capitalism’s enablers.”  Then he asked, “But what is it now?”  His half-answer: “John Doyle’s revival . . . is too wan to answer the question.”  Of the director’s work, Green felt, “Though his stripped-down approach often enhances richly conceived works . . . it makes others, severe to begin with, seem cold and underfed.”  The Times reviewer explained:

The simplicity that has felt clarifying in Mr. Doyle’s best work feels stingy here.  The piano accompaniment strips “The Cradle Will Rock” of much of its sostenuto beauty; what’s left is further eroded by singing that sometimes grates the ears.  The staging, in one 90-minute act, is largely static and, where musical theater razzmatazz is called for, totally underwhelming.  Too much of the acting seems deliberately wooden.

Green found, however, that after an hour, “the production coalesces” and “you begin to feel the tension between propaganda and entertainment as Blitzstein evidently intended.”  The review-writer warned, though, “It’s only a start, but I’m not sure any production could manage the contradictions much better.” 

Calling the CSC Cradle revival “plodding,” Sara Holdren of New York magazine and Vulture, its website, contended:

There’s a strong sense of déjà vu hanging over the cozy bricks-and-boards thrust at Classic Stage Company right now, and not in a good way.  It’s a wonderful setting—intimate without feeling cramped, textured and a little gritty but still spare and elegant—and it’s just right for the kind of democratic, fourth-wall-breaking, we’re-all-in-this-together vibe that’s often distinguishes stripped-down stagings of the kinds of plays from which the theater takes its name.  But artistic director John Doyle . . . seems to be approaching his current production by rote. 

“There’s a fine line between a distinctive directorial signature and a bag of tricks,” asserted Holdren, “and with The Cradle Will Rock—already a blunt instrument of agitprop that requires lots of sharpening if it’s really going to sing or sting—Doyle seems, more than anything else, to be tired, resorting to his tool belt without honing the tools.”  Holdren seems to have agreed with WSJ’s Teachout when she found,

The problem with too frequent an application of the adjective “Brechtian” is that, while it might accurately call to mind a certain aesthetic, it doesn’t necessarily bring along with it any of that writer’s distinctive brilliance. . . . Blitzstein was no Brecht, and . . . The Cradle Will Rock comes off as wooden and ineffectually hammy.  It’s got a point to make—over and over again—but no sparkle, no true wit, and, here, not even much sense of playfulness. 

Director and designer Doyle “keeps the production characteristically spare . . . use of his purposefully limited aesthetic vocabulary here seems mechanical rather than ingenious.”  Holdren bemoaned that “[t]here’s something deflated under the defiance” of the workers, especially in the rendition of the title number, “The Cradle Will Rock.”  She reminded us, though, that “a play’s worth should [not] be determined by a simplistic debate over whether or not it’s capable of sparking social change—but the cradle aside, plays do need to rock us, and this one leaves its audience right where it found them.”

The cyber press gave the show the most coverage.  On Stage Buddy, Elyse Trevers praised the cast as “talented and versatile” but reported that Blitzstein’s “songs tell the story, but little is memorable and at times the stories are plodding and uninspiring.”  Trevers felt that despite “a few earnestly-moving moments, especially with Yazbeck as the struggling druggist and Lara Pulver as Moll . . . the show is little more than a series of events—interactions between Mister Mister and the people he controls.”  Our Stage Buddy concluded, “Although the economy is better today, the themes still resonate as the wealthy classes and big business continue to hold sway over all facets of the economy.  Foreman’s message, one of hope for the masses, still seems naive and unobtainable.”

Eugene Paul of TheaterScene.com characterized CSC’s Cradle as “[c]ool, attractive, more an homage than a fiery presentation” but observed that “the times have radically changed” (have they?) and the CSC cast “does not project the fire-[i]n-the-belly fervor” of the 1937 original company.  Paul continued, “Without that inner conviction and turmoil, Blitzstein’s stereotypical caricatures lose their power to shock, to convince, to persuade, making them uncomfortable to perform with conviction.”  Furthermore, Paul complained, “the piano [is] too thin in presenting Blitzstein’s powerful music” and found the director’s shifting metal-drum environment “a highly clever series of procedures, worthy of our admiration but fatal to Blitzstein’s  cause.  We admire what is going on,” the reviewer felt, “but remain at a cool Brechtian remove.”  He added, “If that is in Doyle’s design, it is a miscalculation.  We want to, we need to be fired up.”  Paul’s bottom line was: “It’s all very college little theatre.”

On The Wrap, Robert Hofler (who was even more annoyed with CSC for not providing paper programs than I am) complained that

Doyle’s patented minimalist approach worked best for Oscar Hammerstein II’s take on Bizet; the narrative is stronger and more linear in “Carmen Jones.”  Brecht’s “Arturo Ui” and Blitzstein’s “Cradle” aren’t only more episodic; the scenes are piled on top of each other, the connective tissue of a story being much less obvious.  When the actors aren’t switching roles, they’re busy rearranging the stage furniture, which, in the case of “Cradle,” amounts to a few barrels.

“Blitzstein isn’t subtle,” Hofler reminded us, “and neither is Doyle, who has Mr. Mister throw around an increasingly large roll of dollar bills whenever he wants to buy someone off.  At show’s end,” The Wrap’s reviewer reported, “the actors here are knee-deep in paper money.”  The review-writer praised Pulver as Moll and Sadie Pollock (that’s not like Jackson Pollock, by the way, but Polack, as in a slur for a Polish person), Eakeley as Reverend Salvation, Cooper as Junior Mister and Dr. Specialist, and the four piano players.

Ron Cohen, in Show-Score’s highest-rated review (90), gave CSC’s Cradle five stars on the website Musical Theatre Review and labeled the production “triumphantly alive” with an “ensemble bringing passion, immediacy and theatrical acuity to the script’s thesis, its music and sardonic, bitter humour [sic].”  Acknowledging that the current political times make Cradle relevant, Cohen applauds, “What Doyle and company succeed in doing is making it thrillingly relevant.”  The MTR writer interpreted the uniform factory-worker costume scheme as appearing “as if a company of everyday (but sumptuously talented) workers are putting on the show for us.”  With this, however, “the storytelling can get a little muddled now and then,” Cohen reported.  With respect to the music, though, Cohen cautioned that “it may take a while for ears to adjust to the emphatic rhythms and seeming tunelessness of Blitzstein’s” score, but “it’s all handled superbly by the company.” 

Carole Di Tosti on the blog Carole Di Tosti, in one of the two notices that scored 85, the second-highest rating on Show-Score, labeled the show, “which employed no elaborate spectacle,” “sleek.”  She described the play as “sung as a quasi opera, in a Bertolt Brecht style with ferocity and near didacticism,” which Di Tosti  found “certainly speaks for our time.”  She praised “the minimalism of props which the actors use seamlessly,” including “the use of greenbacks which dominate the scenes.”  The “talented actors” of the company produced “a fine production,” Di Tosti felt, and “Doyle’s direction/staging/design is spot-on.”  In the end, however, the reviewer reported that CSC’s Cradle is “a potentially stunning production which fell a bit short” because the singers “[a]t times . . . were imprecise” in their enunciation.  “Nevertheless,” she declared in the end, the revival “is a must-see as a trenchant allegory for our time.”

On CurtainUp, Elyse Sommer declared that Doyle’s cast “will pull you into the power of the gritty score” and “the finely sung songs make up for” the fact that “The Cradle Will Rock tends to come off as a sermon more than an entertainment.”  As her final word, Sommer admitted, “Ultimately, my biggest disappointment was that it wasn't hopelessly dated, but undeniably relevant.”

Steven Suskin acknowledged on New York Stage Review, in one of the site’s two reviews, “The CSC Cradle doesn’t rock quite so well, but it is an admirable presentation of an historically important musical.”  Suskin thought, “Doyle and his denizens blow the accumulated dust off the piece, bringing out the strengths in this most uncompromising work.”  The NYSR writer found that Doyle’s “intimate production places full attention on the cast, revealing some fine performances.”  He allowed that “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.” 

In the second NYSR notice, which received a Show-Score score of 40, one of the two second-lowest for Cradle, Michael Sommers complained at the outset that “Doyle [is] not at all at his considerable best” and “the result is less than impressive.”  Labeling the play a “mostly sung-through musical cartoon,” Sommers lamented, “It’s too bad that this often fevered, entirely fascinating work’s proletarian and musical charms are muffled in Doyle’s misjudged, under-performed production.”  Of Doyle and Arsenault’s set, NYSR number two caviled, “Such visuals do not suggest a Steeltown so much as an Oil City,” but Sommers had a more pointed criticism of the performing: he was displeased with “performers who more or less sing (and more or less act, alas)” and “the not entirely resonant sound of music they make.”  (He was harshest on Yazbeck.)  Summing up, Sommers found, “Generally, there’s too little zest to their group effort, however, and the show merely plods along rather than rouses the audience. Sad to say, this rendition of The Cradle Will Rock scarcely rocks at all.”

On TheaterScene.net, David Kaufman complained, “Without voice or costume changes, it’s difficult to know when Ken Barnett is Editor Daily or when he’s President Prexy.”  Kaufman found that “what’s missing from Blitzstein’s The Cradle Will Rock is the heart and/or soul that every musical requires,” which he blamed partly on “Doyle’s direction.”  Kaufman dubbed Cradle “a wannabe musical or opera that, ironically, lacks substance, given its heavy-hitting intentions.”

Donna Herman of New York Theatre Guide, reminding us of the nearly-abortive début, remarked that “it makes perfect sense that, with the swamp returned to Washington, DC where another conservative congress is making headlines with corruption scandals, The Cradle Will Rock is being revived.”  The NYTG reviewer observed that “Blitzstein’s modern style of music that could almost be described as harsh, at times defying easy melody, fits [Doyle’s] kind of stripped-down presentation.”  Herman felt that the talented cast . . . all manage to nimbly navigate their multiple roles” but also found that “[w]ith almost everyone dressed in some form of overalls or factory worker garb, the early scene in the jail before you understand that everyone will have multiple roles is very confusing.”  Like me, Herman longs to see a fully mounted production of Cradle, but concluded: “I wouldn’t have missed this chance to see a full production of The Cradle Will Rock.”

“Though there’s the occasional lack of tension that makes the 90-minute production tend to lag at times,” reported Broadway World’s Michael Dale, “individual performances are quite good, and the clima[c]tic confrontation . . . is fiercely played.”  On Theater Pizzazz, Joseph Pisano noted that while the history of Cradle is “a great story of art fighting against censorship, that doesn’t necessarily mean the art itself was great.”  At CSC, though, as “[l]ed by director John Doyle . . ., the ten actors, each of whom portray multiple roles, give affecting allegorical life to Blitzstein’s Steeltown, USA.” 

Steven Ross of Front Mezz Junkies dubbed Cradle a “mesmerizingly sing-song sonata of a play” and the CSC production an “interesting and thought provoking revival solidly directed by John Doyle.”  Oddly, Ross suggested that “the passion and emotional depth of what dance might have brought to the thesis on corruption and resistance is what this CSC production is lacking.”  He felt, “The blood of the desperate isn’t pounding in [the characters’] veins.”  (All this seems to come from the fact that Ross longed to see Yazbeck dance because the actor’s a Broadway hoofer.)  In the end, the FMJ reviewer lamented, “The singing registers beautifully, the dance of the staging entertains . . ., the enthusiasm of the cast resonates, but the heart of the piece never pumps with the same power of . . . that first rebellious production.”

Characterizing CSC’s revival as “solid.” Cititour’s Brian Scott Lipton found that “Blitzstein’s bare-bones script . . . doesn’t quite make the stakes feel high enough.”  Nonetheless, countered Lipton, “Still, the entire cast . . . works very hard to flesh out their fictional counterparts.”  Though “sometimes engaging,” CT’s reviewer found that “the songs are also a bit one-note.” Doyle, however, “adds enough choreography to make the numbers more than just ‘park and bark’ solos.”  The director’s “ultra-minimalist” style, though, “has the effect of either forcing audiences to really pay attention . . . or allowing them to get distracted by their own thoughts.”  Lipton sums up by adding that “as a work of stagecraft, it still feels too much a piece of its time to make the same impact it did 82 years ago.”

On TheaterMania, Zachary Stewart, in another review that scored only a 40, proclaimed the history of Cradle’s 1937 opening “a joyous tale of regular people defying fearsome institutions, and singing in the face of power.”  Then he lamented, “It’s a pity none of that comes through in John Doyle’s dispassionate, soporific revival at Classic Stage Company.  The cradle rocks all right.”  The TM reviewer argued, “There’s never been a better time to revive The Cradle Will Rock,” as he recalled the Jussie Smollett embarrassment, the Varsity Blues college admissions scandal, and the Sackler art-funding disgrace.  “With the audience bringing so much pent-up rage into the theater, there’s no reason that a play like this should feel frozen in time.” 

Stewart criticized all of Doyle’s production choices, including the unit costuming, the non-representational set, the pared-down cast and consequent multiple casting, and even the unamplified singing, asserting that Doyle “does his production no favors by falling back on old tricks.”  The TM writer continued: “With this semi-intelligible production, Doyle seems to assume that his audience already knows this rarely revived play, robbing newcomers of the opportunity to discover the work in its full clarity.”  In conclusion, Stewart proclaimed, “Blunt by design and rarely hummable, The Cradle Will Rock still has the power to shake audiences awake . . ., but it takes a firmer hand than this to really push us out of our bassinets.”

Talkin’ Broadway’s David Hurst, whose notice was Show-Score’s lowest-rated at 35, reveled in the prospect of a revival of The Cradle Will Rock at this auspicious (“Trumpian”) moment, particularly one staged by Doyle and produced at CSC.  “Imagine my surprise,” sighed Hurst, “then to encounter a lifeless production which, despite an abundance of talent at his disposal, never explodes with rage under Doyle’s flaccid direction.”  Complaining that “there’s no energy or vitality propelling the storytelling of Doyle’s production.” Hurst declared, “The cast is terrific,” praising all 10 of Doyle’s company, especially “triple-threat Yazbeck,” as the TB reviewer insists, “who tries mightily to bring Doyle’s production to life with the rousing title song.”  In the end, however, not even “mighty” Yazbeck “can save this revival.”  Hurst’s final assessment is that “whether you call it an allegorical play in music or proletariat agitprop, The Cradle Will Rock deserves better than its current mounting at Classic Stage.”

On his blog, Theatre’s Leiter Side, Samuel L. Leiter dubbed the CSC revival of Cradle “problematic.” He warned, “If you don’t know the script, or can’t make out the lyrics as they’re being overpowered by the piano pounding . . ., you’ll have considerable difficulty in making out who’s the plutocrat, the cop, the druggist, the hooker, the foreman, and so on.”  He added, “Nor will it be easy to separate the different characters played by actors wearing the same garments for each.”  Leiter reported, “There’s a lot of talent involved in the ensemble," and “[s]everal moments are imaginatively staged but Doyle overdoes a few things” like the way Mr. Mister throws his cash around to make those he’s paying off crawl for it.  The revival lacked “nuance and character expression . . . in Doyle's fast-paced but monotonous production, so one-note that my plus-one couldn't help saying: ‘It had a certain ring.  Bo-ring.’”  The blogger-reviewer concluded, “The wind is blowing at the CSC but down has come baby, The Cradle Will Rock and all.”