The theater that said "No!" to the feds

Exactly 75 years ago tomorrow, one of the most remarkable events in American theater history took place. Producer John Houseman and director Orson Welles were working on "The Cradle Will Rock," a Broadway musical by Marc Blitzstein, and previews were set to begin on June 16, 1937. The show had been funded by the Works Progress Administration, one of FDR's job-building projects during The Depression, but the WPA decided four days before its opening to reorganize all arts projects and postpone every opening until July 1.

The official reason was budget cuts, but many people felt "Cradle" rocked too many established boats. The hero was a union organizer named Larry Foreman. He was opposed by Mr. Mister, a factory owner who controlled virtually everything in Steeltown -- including a tame newspaper editor, minister, and university president -- and who didn't intend to share power. (Subtle, it ain't. Musically effective, it is. Patti LuPone and Houseman's Acting Company made a fine recording in 1983, with a spoken introduction by Houseman.)

The three creators refused to acknowledge the order to stop and wouldn't announce the postponement. They found a theater and a piano themselves literally moments before the curtain was supposed to go up on the 16th; the audience that had gather outside the Maxine Elliott Theatre traipsed 21 blocks north to the larger Venice Theatre, where Houseman and Welles invited people in off the street for free to fill extra seats. But the musicians' union refused to play unless Houseman could pay their full salaries, which he couldn't. And Actors Equity Association refused to let actors go onstage without permission from the original producer, the federal government. (Yes, a show extolling the value of unions was being undermined by two unions.)

Blitzstein agreed to play and sing the whole score at the piano. When he began the opening number, a plaintive song for the streetwalker Moll, actress Olive Stanton stood up in the audience to deliver her lines. She had found a loophole: It was legal to perform if she wasn't onstage. Other cast members joined in, and the night finished in triumph. The actors got a two-week leave of absence from the WPA, a private backer came on board, and the show kept going. It eventually opened on Broadway in 1938 and ran for 108 performances. (It has been revived three times in New York and once in London.)

You may take issue with the show's social commentary or Blitzstein's songs, which have the flavor of a collaboration between Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht. (I like both elements.) But you have to admire the actors and producers who put their money, reputations and possible economic futures on the line to defy the federal government and produce a work of art in which they deeply believed. How many people would do that today?  

Charlotte, pat your own back

If you watched the Tony Awards Sunday night, you saw "Clybourne Park" win best play. Bruce Norris' stinging drama about two generations of people battling over the integration of a Chicago neighborhood had already won a Pulitzer, so that didn't come as a surprise.

But savvy Charlotte theatergoers know we had it first: Actor's Theatre of Charlotte produced a version of the show that jolted local audiences this season before the Broadway opening. In fact, ATC is on a Tony roll: It will open its 2012-13 slate with "God of Carnage" and "Red," the Tony-winning plays of 2009 and 2010.

The first is Yasmina Reza's four-way slugfest, a comedy about allegedly civilized parents battling over a child's indiscretion; the second is John Logan's drama about Mark Rothko's two-year attempt to produce a masterpiece. (Get details at www.actorstheatrecharlotte.org.)

In fact, the 2011 Tony-winner is also on the way: Blumenthal Performing Arts' Broadway Lights series will bring "War Horse" next May. And these plays are the tip of the iceberg for a season of more serious dramas all around Charlotte, from Moises Kaufman's "33 Variations" at CAST to Edward Albee's "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" at Theatre Charlotte.

Since I came back to the theater beat four summers ago, I've wished that producers would put more meat on my plate. I don't know if other playgoers will be as grateful as I am, but I can't wait.

The Queen City, indeed

Queen City Theatre Company, which an acquaintance inaccurately calls "the gay group," deals with all kinds of characters, from the agonizing Italian hero and heroine of "Passion" to the heterosexual-political triangle in "Chess." (Or quadrangle, if you throw in the wife of the Russian.)

But when it celebrates lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender life with a Queen's Fab Fest -- as it will do June 27-30 -- it provides a slice of that culture wider than any other mainstream group in the Queen City will serve up.

Even before it begins, QCTC will do a single performance of William Finn's "Falsettos" June 23 in McGlohon Theatre at Spirit Square. That show is sort of pansexual: It revolves around a Jewish extended family of a married man and his ex-wife, son, gay lover. psychiatrist and lesbian neighbors. Proceeds from this evening and the Gay Fab Fest benefit Campus Pride, the Charlotte-based national organization working to create a safer college environment for LGBT students.

There follows a bonanza at Duke Energy Theatre: Miss Coco Peru in "There Comes a Time" on June 27; "Out of the Boxx: An Evening with Pandora Boxx" June 28; "Twisted Broadway: A Broadway Cabaret" June 29 and "The Wizard of Oz: A Sing-a-long With Buff Faye" June 30. (If I only had the nerve!) You'll find details and ticket links at www.queencitytheatre.com.

Anyone with pretensions to living in a world-class city (or even a place network newscasters can mention without appending "North Carolina") realizes great cities make space for every type of expression, regardless of ethnicity or race or sexual preference. So whether you're gay or not, you've gotta be glad Queen City represents part of the cultural life of the Queen City.

You move or you die

The 70th birthdays of two iconic performers come up in the next few weeks: Paul McCartney on June 18 and Harrison Ford on July 13. I don't think you could find a more striking contrast between an artist and a star.

Macca continues to write songs, release concept albums, tour, promote causes publicly and generally reinvent himself slightly as he ages. He hasn't clung to the beloved image of the rocker from The Beatles and Wings; he has written classical tone poems and sacred music and new-age stuff. Whether or not it's all from his top shelf as a composer, he keeps trying to grow.

Ford, on the other hand, was quoted in the most recent AARP magazine as having "a strong ambition" to do a fifth movie as Indiana Jones.

I can guess at his motivation: The fourth Jones outing was not only his lone box office hit of the last 12 years but a jaw-dropping embarrassment for himself and all concerned. (Not that you can really embarrass Shia LeBoeuf, who has made three "Transformers" movies.) Ford may wish to atone for it, or he may wish to leap back into the public eye in a big way.

And he does keep working: He's playing significant supporting roles in the upcoming "Ender's Game" and "42" (the Jackie Robinson biopic), but neither of those is likely to break him out of the gruff, laconic mold he established long ago. What happened to the ambitious actor who sandwiched "Blade Runner" between the first two Indiana Jones movies and "Witness," "Working Girl" and "The Mosquito Coast" between the second and third?

Maybe Ford's not getting the best mainstream scripts now, just as McCartney no longer gets radio airplay or big boosts from record companies. Couldn't he make a small indie film or test himself in a play instead? I ask as a fan who hates to see talent atrophy -- and he had it. Maybe he still does.

Dark they were, and golden-eyed

Ray Bradbury died Tuesday. So, finally, did a part of my childhood.

He excelled at stories about other worlds; the title of this blog entry comes from a wonderful piece about Earthlings who visit Mars and began to change imperceptibly into something non-human. But for me, he has no peer at a different kind of tale: Memories of youth that summon up all the fears, joys and bewilderment encountered before puberty.

Nobody has ever caught so simply and beautifully the sound of new sneakers thudding through wet grass, the scent of a warm dinner drifting through a neighbor's window, the queasiness induced by rumors of a passing killer or the silent smile of a strange tenant at the boarding house down the block. He grew up in Illinois 40 years before I landed in suburban New Jersey. But his boyhood became my boyhood in my memory, and that's an effect only the greatest writers can achieve.

He achieved it over and over: with the hellish carnival of "Something Wicked This Way Comes," the philosophic star-voyaging in "The Martian Chronicles," the sinister oddities of "The October Country." (Novices might begin with those three and work up to "Fahrenheit 451.") I recently thumbed through my anthology of his short stories and found perhaps half a dozen that didn't work for me -- among a hundred.

When Bradbury stepped out of his element, he sometimes floundered. He worked on the script for the underrated but uneven film "Moby Dick" in 1956, butting up against director John Huston and  uncredited writer Norman Corwin. Bradbury's late-life, thriller-mystery combinations don't show his strengths.

Yet he blended fiction and memoir, fantasy and recollection, as well as any writer I've ever known. He could alternate between the moving and the macabre, between compassion and cruelty, and he blended the two in some of his greatest works. Dark those were in tone, and golden-eyed with hope at the same time.

What you missed this weekend...

Unless, of course, you went to Spoleto Festival USA in Charleston:

Composer Philip Glass, stooped and peering through spectacles and looking like the professor he might have become when studying math and philosophy at the University of Chicago, as he took bows after the final performance of his opera "Kepler" (about the German astronomer);

A rivulet of sweat trickling down the jaw of Jennifer Frautschi, a newcomer to the chamber music lineup, as she negotiated the tortuous final movement of Leos Janacek's violin sonata with pianist Stephen Prutsman;

Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet, sandwiching an electrifying piece about the annunciation of Christ's birth between two dark works -- literally and figuratively -- about human tribalism;

Ukulele phenom Jake Shimabukuro doing a sound check for his outdoor concert at The Cistern, dazzling about two dozen passers-by (me among them) with 20 free minutes of his virtuosity;

Oscar-nominated director Atom Egoyan's multi-media presentation of "Feng Yi Ting," an opera by Guo Wenjing about political machinations between a patriot and the two men she manipulates during the Han dynasty (and the coolest 45 minutes of opera you'll see this spring).

You have one more week to catch the 2012 edition; it closes Sunday night with a concert by Cedric Watson and Bijou Creole. (Get details at www.spoletousa.org.) I realize most of us head for the beach in  warm weather to give our minds a rest, not open them up. But you'll never see things like these in Charlotte.

The man who put the "f" in art

Today we celebrate the 155th birthday of Joseph Pujol, the extraordinary Frenchman who made a fine living as a professional flatulist. His stage name, Le Petomane, comes from the combination of the French verb "to fart" and the suffix for "maniac." Yes, that's right: He made up to 20,000 francs per show by pooting.

At the height of his popularity (roughly 1890 to 1910), he could recreate cannon fire and earthquakes, render all the sounds from a barnyard full of animals or play "O Sole Mio" and "La Marseillaise" on an ocarina, through a rubber tube inserted -- well, you get the idea. He did this not simply by breaking wind but by "inhaling" air into his derriere and then expelling it again at will, modulating pitch and duration.

Nor was he alone. He had imitators at the time, including Edgar Grootna (who posthumously lent his last name to a 1970s rock band), and has had some since: Mr. Methane paid homage to him on "Britain's Got Talent" a few years back, before unreceptive judges and a stunned audience. But Pujol stood at the pinnacle of his profession. His "nom de boom" endures today: Mel Brooks played Governor Lepetomane in "Blazing Saddles," and Pujol appears as a character in Baz Luhrmann's "Moulin Rouge!"

Random thoughts about this astonishing man, whose biography can be found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Pujol:

1) On some level, this explains why the French love Jerry Lewis.

2) A combination of true uniqueness and self-promotion (plus willingness to endure initial abuse) always pays off in show business. Pujol was still popular when the devastation of World War I forced him into retirement, and he resumed his first career as a baker. But the uniqueness is crucial: Does anyone imagine we'll be talking about Britney Spears or the Kardashians after 27 years?

3) His concerts were attended by high and low: Edward, Prince of Wales and Sigmund Freud were among the celebrities who saw him perform. One of the definitions of a great artist is someone who takes a universal idea or action and shows it to us in a different light. On that scale, Pujol was great indeed.