Frank Capra’s “Meet John Doe” galvanized Americans demoralized by the Great Depression to demand political action. Over the years, the powerful film has been remounted in several versions but none so striking as the production presented by Ford’s Theatre through April.

The new musical by Andrew Gerle and Eddie Sugarman marks Ford’s first world premiere in more than five years and its first collaboration with accomplished Washington director Eric Schaeffer. It stars Heidi Blickenstaff as Ann Mitchell, an ambitious newspaper reporter, and James Moye as John Willoughby, the man she hires to personify her fictitious character, John Doe.