The story fictionalizes the true events that surrounded the development of the 1937 musical The Cradle Will Rock by Marc Blitzstein; it adapts history to create an account of the original production, bringing in other stories of the time to produce a social commentary on the role of art and power in the 1930s, particularly amidst the struggles of the labor movement at the time and the corresponding appeal of socialism and communism among many intellectuals, artists and working-class people in the same period.

FTP and other projects of the Works Progress Administration face anti-communist criticism and increasing government pressure led by the new House Committee on Un-American Activities.

He eventually finishes the play, and it is greenlit by Flanagan as an FTP production and attached to director Orson Welles and producer John Houseman.

Tommy Crickshaw, a ventriloquist with FTP's vaudeville project who resents his assignment to train the untalented duo Sid and Larry attends the meeting and finds himself attracted to Hazel.

Among her connections are William Randolph Hearst, Nelson Rockefeller, and steel magnate Gray Mathers, whose pro-fascist dealings create tension with his wife, Constance, an enthusiastic patron of the arts and friend of Houseman.

Rather than give in to defeat, Welles and Houseman (assisted by a gleeful Constance) set up an improvised performance in a shuttered theater, with Blitzstein as both cast and orchestra.

Simultaneously, workers destroy Rivera's mural; Tommy shares a bittersweet embrace with a tearful Hazel in his dressing room; and a group of former FTP performers stage a mock funeral procession of Crickshaw's dummy (renamed "Federal Theatre Project").

Audra McDonald, Erin Hill, Victoria Clark, and Barnard Hughes also appear as Federal Theatre Project performers cast in The Cradle Will Rock.

Some examples of this are the addition and subsequent destruction of Rivera's Man at the Crossroads in the RCA Building (1933–34), the Italian invasion of Ethiopia (1935), labor strikes against Little Steel (1937) and the Dies Committee's assault on the Federal Theatre Project (1938) (Weales 2000).

[5] While the original production of The Cradle Will Rock was stated to be "The most exciting evening of theater this New York generation has seen" (MacLeish, Cole 2000)[citation needed], some critics did not feel the same about Robbins' reproduction of the event for film.