musical theatre review: 1776

[calimac]

After South Bay MT's first show of the season, I wasn't sure how good their chops were, but their 1776 was up to snuff. There were only a couple of minor characters who couldn't act, a couple more who couldn't sing, but the only song that was scuffed thereby was "Momma Look Sharp". Everybody else was good, some excellent. Dickinson was the best actor of the bunch; Richard Henry Lee pranced vigorously throughout his song without losing breath (I complimented him on this after the show and he explained, "Aerobic exercise"); a more stolid and weathered Adams than the usual contributed to the power and hence amusement value of his interruptions of the chorus in "But Mr. Adams". Abigail was a woman of size, and not afraid to use it. So was Franklin: this and several lesser parts were played by women, and except for the one who couldn't figure out what octave she should sing in (see above criticism) you'd hardly notice.

It's a little difficult to watch 1776 today, when our long democratic story is lying choking in its own blood upon the ground (to borrow a phrase), but a good enough production can make you forget that ... momentarily.

Comments

[desperance.livejournal.com]

We're just home from tonight's show. And liked it very much. The gender-neutral casting worked better than I'd expected - and yes, Dickinson was excellent. (And I looked him up on Wikipedia, and his actual role in the founding of the US was ... well, nothing like the show suggests...)

That was my first live 1776 (we run the movie every year on July 4th, at my half-birthday party), and I'm not even an American yet.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

They did oversimplify a lot, but the core is true. Dickinson was highly opposed to British treatment of the colonies, or he wouldn't have been in the Congress in the first place. But the Congress really did, as Adams complained in his opening song, desperately search for acceptable reconciliation terms even as they were running a rebellion, and Dickinson was the principal reconciliator; but it's also true that when the British (later on) finally offered the terms that the colonists had been asking for before the rebellion, they were turned down; things had gone too far by then. Dickinson's opposition to declaring independence was based on his opposition to violence and his belief that a solution could be worked out by negotiation somehow; thus, in the play, his speech to Adams in the debate before their fight more accurately represents his views than the song "Cool Considerate Men."