TV OPERA/BALLET REVIEWS : STRONG ‘CRADLE,’ WOOZY ‘OMO’ ON PBS

The Acting Company production of Marc Blitzstein’s 1937 labor opera “The Cradle Will Rock” begins under a severe handicap tonight at 10:30 on Channel 28.

At the beginning of the 90-minute telecast, director John Houseman tells the story of how the opera originally reached the stage: a fascinating tale of government and union obstructionism averted only at the last minute.

Houseman gives such a brilliant performance here--mixing the moral authority of an Old Testament prophet with the wit, energy and sense of significant detail of a born raconteur--that “The Cradle” itself seems awfully anti-climactic once it begins. But give it time.

Obviously, Blitzstein is offering an American equivalent of the proletarian music dramas by Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill--but, at first, he lacks Brecht’s ability to give satire a mythic dimension and Weill’s genius for transforming pop influences into a personal style.

Eventually, however, Blitzstein’s talent for pithy musical characterization and feel for the vernacular emerges at full force in a string of show-stopping set-pieces--among them a nasty lampoon on the emptiness of pop culture (“Croon-Spoon”) and a powerful lament for the betrayed laborer (“Joe Worker”). Potent stuff.

The plot of “The Cradle Will Rock” reveals--mostly in flashback--how the moral guardians of a company town have been corrupted by the sinister embodiment of Big Money: the union-busting, murderous Mr. Mister (David Schramm). Blitzstein specifically indicts the press, clergy and police but saves some of his most trenchant attacks for those artists who can’t wait to sell out.

Under Houseman’s direction, the Acting Company gives a broad but sharp-edged performance--appropriate in what is essentially a social cartoon. Michele-Denise Woods is overwhelming in her bitter aria of victimization. Randle Mell effectively embodies the all-American virtues of unionism-on-the-march.

Schramm exudes the evil of unbridled capitalism. Mary Lou Rosato is perfect as the ultimate manipulating socialite. Patti LuPone exudes star presence as a waif-like hooker but glosses over some of the work’s most biting lyrics.

The production was taped in live performance at the Kennedy Center two years ago. Stereo simulcasts are scheduled on KUSC (91.5 FM) and KCPB (91.1 FM).

Filled with woozy video distortions of stage choreography and equally woozy proclamations about creative experiment, Rob Fruchtman’s hour-long “The Creation of Omo” (to be telecast Sunday at 2:30 p.m. on Channel 28) documents a collaboration by four moonlighting San Francisco Ballet dancers on a short-lived 1985 attempt at artistic trailblazing.

No doubt about it: Victoria Morgan, Kirk Peterson, Betsy Erickson, Val Caniparoli and their designer colleague Sandra Woodall considered themselves genuine pioneers, “stepping outside the traditional bounds of choreography” (in Morgan’s words) into uncharted realms of expression. Ecce Omo.

Unfortunately, they were pathetically out of touch with the history and traditions of ballet--with the reforms of Mikhail Fokine 70 years earlier, for starters--and especially with the innovations of modern and postmodern dance.

Thus their breathlessly hyped “discoveries”--about the collaborative process, the integration of music and decor, the use of texts and nontheatrical movement vocabularies--merely mirrored achievements and trends that American dance absorbed long ago.

Conventionally decorative and virtuosic, largely conservative in movement style, the Omo works excerpted here (“On Moving On,” “Accidental or Abnormal Chromisomal Events,” “Overlay”) reflect the ballet dancer’s genuine longing for something more than the classical/neoclassical status quo.

But noble yearnings, sleek (sometimes provocative) costuming and a company of handsome, powerful Bay Area dancers do not redeem “The Creation of Omo” from its incessant self-congratulation and aggressive salesmanship.

Sometimes the wide-eyed rhetoric of the interview segments turns delirious. At one point, former San Francisco Ballet director Michael Smuin gushes about Peterson’s dancing abilities, citing the utterly bogus “fact that he’s worked probably with every major choreographer in the world with the possible exception of Martha Graham.”

As “proof,” cut to Peterson dancing a solo from “To the Beatles,” an inane pop ballet by (who else?) Smuin himself. This kind of nonsense, along with Fruchtman’s habit of shooting the best dancers from the worst angles, makes the only appropriate response to the telecast one of violent Omophobia.