The Cradle Will Rock at Boston Center for the Arts

Marc Blitzstein's musical The Cradle will Rock, coming to the stage at the Calderwood Pavilion at the Boston Center for the Arts, is so timely and applicable to today's political situation that you'd never know it was originally staged over 75 years ago. The year is 1937, and corporations and churches are using their influence to shape laws. Unemployment is skyrocketing and millions of Americans are losing their homes. Rarely performed these days, the play follows one man's attempts to unionize one town's workers and combat the wicked businessman and his control over the town's factory, church and local press. This musical was originally considered so scandalous that the U.S. government tried to shut it down.