Patti LuPone steps back into the role that led to her 1985 Olivier Award for Best Actress in a Musical as Moll in The Cradle Will Rock on Monday, May 19, 7pm at Broadway's Bernard Jacobs Theatre, 242 West 45th Street. The concert staging of Marc Blitzstein's iconic work will benefit The Acting Company, co-founded by John Houseman, Cradle's original producer in 1937, who directed Ms. LuPone and a cast of Acting Company Alumni in a revival almost 50 years later. Lonny Price (Lincoln Center's Sweeney Todd and Company) will direct; Michael Barrett (Caramoor, NY Festival of Song) will again serve as musical director and play the score as he did in the 1980's production. Tickets will go on sale next month; information on benefit tickets including dinner with Ms. LuPone and the cast is available from 212-258-3111.
"Cradle is an amazing piece of theater, a legendary piece of theater history and a show that is still relevant today," said Ms. LuPone. "Blitzstein described it as part Gilbert and Sullivan, part Brecht, part Weill but it also included popular song styles of the time." It was first developed by Acting Company co-founder John Houseman and directed by Orson Welles in 1937 as part of the WPA's Classic Unit of the Federal Theater. When production was abruptly stopped, it became a project of their famed Mercury Theater. Via archival footage, John Houseman will open the May 19 performance telling how he, Orson Welles and Marc Blitzstein overcame the federal government's attempted shutdown of the piece when someone in Congress concluded that the material was antiestablishment. Houseman repeated that story at the beginning of each performance of his 1980's Acting Company production both in New York and at London's Old Vic.Videos