I was privileged to be in the audience for several wonderful performances this weekend. There was “An Hour of Offenbach,” the Carthage Opera Workshop’s celebration of the effervescent music of Jacques Offenbach. (I couldn’t be prouder of our young singers.) There was the exciting homecoming concert of Carthage’s Wind Orchestra after their triumphant tour of Japan. (I was thrilled for my colleague, Dr. James Ripley, and so pleased for all of those young musicians.) There was also the darling and entertaining Racine Theater Guild Children’s Theater presentation of The Big Bad Musical that featured Kathy as the Fairy Godmother.
If all that weren’t enough excitement for one weekend (which also included two church services, an afternoon of auditions at Carthage, and a Super Bowl party) I also made time in my schedule to see a performance of the musical 1776 because I wanted to support a private voice student of mine performing the leading role of John Adams. The Music Theater program of the Kenosha Unified School District is quite renowned, and over the last couple of decades I have seen them deliver some extraordinary performances, including Parade, Les Miserables, Tarzan, Catch me if you Can, West Side Story, and Aida, so I knew that I was likely to see something truly first-rate. Still, it was an exceptionally full weekend, and as I walked into the Bradford High School Auditorium, I was pretty sure that I would only last until intermission before heading home to bed. (1776 is a long show, and I’m not particularly fond of its score.)
But never underestimate the invigorating power of Live Theater – especially when done with this kind of excellence. Long before it was intermission, I knew that I was seeing something very special and that there was absolutely no way I was going to be able to tear myself away from this performance before it was over. And indeed, I was there to the last moment, and then found myself on my feet, cheering … and not just for my own student, Noah Olsen, but for everyone who had a hand in this powerful, moving and sometimes hilarious production.
A word about the work itself. 1776 is a show that depicts the fiercely contentious circumstances amidst which the Declaration of Independence was drafted and adopted by the 13 colonies. It focuses on John Adams and his ferocious advocacy for independence from Britain in the face of defiance from some and hesitancy from others. The brilliant and whimsical Benjamin Franklin proves to be an valuable and effective ally for the cranky Adams – and we also meet the gifted Thomas Jefferson, who reluctantly agreed to shoulder the responsibility of writing the actual document. Filling out the cast are the primary delegates representing the thirteen colonies- as well as two female characters, Abigail Adams and Martha Jefferson- whose presence in the story helps to remind us that our Founding Fathers were not just renowned statesmen and patriots. They were also flesh and blood human beings who, at least in many cases, were setting aside the personal pleasures of home and family for the sake of this vitally important cause. The show was the idea of pop song composer Sherman Edwards, who created the music and lyrics for the work – but it was Peter Stone who crafted the book. The show premiered on Broadway in 1969 and ran for more than one thousand performances; it would go on to win the Tony Award for Best Musical.
I think one of the reasons I wasn’t sure I would be able to last the whole performance (beyond my own fatigue) is that I am not a big fan of the musical score, which strikes me as wildly uneven. (Several of the songs strike me as promising rough drafts in need of serious polishing.) It doesn’t help that my first encounter with the show was with the 1972 film version, which was hampered by – among other things – mediocre singing, which made a lot of the songs sound downright amateurish. My assessment of the show improved rather dramatically when I played in the pit for a Carthage production of the show – and although my opinion of the musical score remained fairly sour, I was riveted by the central drama of the story: the forging of our Declaration of Independence and how close we came to never becoming a nation at all. One interesting facet of Carthage’s production was that they chose to cast the show Gender Blind, which meant that some female students were cast in male roles – including two of the most powerful opponents to the proposal of independence. In fact, when I think back to that production (which was more than a decade ago) what I remember most vividly are the remarkably convincing performances delivered by Megan Bowen (who portrayed Pennsylvania’s John Dickinson, a forceful opponent of the move for independence) and Adrianne Saputo (who I believe portrayed Edward Rutledge of South Carolina, who succeeds in forcing Jefferson who strike all mention of slaves and slavery from the document.) Going in, I would not have believed that those particular characters could have been so effectively portrayed by women- but they were! (Kathy reminded me last night of her most vivid memory of that production- that the final stage tableau was a re-creation of the most famous painting of the scene when the declaration was signed by the delegates of the Continental Congress.)
This weekend’s performance in Kenosha was, in a sense, even more Gender Blind. The roles of John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin were portrayed by men – as was a grizzled old delegate from Delaware. All of the other delegates – indeed, all of the other characters in the show – were portrayed by young women. The production helped the audience make sense of it by opening the show with these young people, dressed in their own street clothes, standing in front of and gazing at the aforementioned painting – and then stepping into it, as it were, to portray the events that led up to that dramatic moment. It was a great idea executed perfectly- and it was also the kind of thing that demanded some imagination from all of us in the audience- which, after all, is one of the most valuable things that live theater gives us. And I am happy to say that thanks to the high quality of all of these students, I did not spend a single moment brooding over the fact that famous American men were being portrayed by young women. Any such concerns (at least for me) evaporated before they even formed. That, in and of itself, was quite an accomplishment by these young people and those who directed them.
What ensued was a performance of remarkable eloquence which I think, in terms of acting, is the very best high school performance I have ever seen on any stage. There was not one single weak link, theatrically, in this entire cast. Moreover, there was something quite impressive about hearing these young people take on the slightly antiquated language of the 1776 colonists and making it their own. It felt entirely authentic, start to finish. I was, of course, especially impressed with the performance delivered by my voice student, Noah Olsen, in the crucial role of John Adams – but every young actor on that stage operated at the same level of excellence. The singing, to be perfectly frank, was a bit more variable – in part, I suspect, because the score itself presents awkward challenges – but was perfectly fine, and certain moments were extremely fine. (I even found myself enjoying the song “He plays the Violin,” which I usually find excruciating. But the young lady who portrayed Martha Jefferson really sold the song to me, as the saying goes.)
I may not be an enthusiastic fan of the musical score, but I think the book (the spoken dialogue) of 1776 may very well be the very best book of them all. I love it so much, in fact, that I truly believe that if one were to wave a magic wand and remove all of the songs from the evening, I wouldn’t mind in the least. And there are very few shows I would say that about: maybe The King and I. Maybe Ragtime. Maybe Light in the Piazza. But the book of 1776 is maybe the greatest masterpiece of them all. Part of what makes it so remarkable is that it portrays a story with an ending that all of us already know, and yet somehow we find ourselves wrapped up in white-knuckled worry over whether or not these delegates can find a way to reach across the gigantic ideological divide that separates them over several different issues. By the time we have journeyed through this story, it is very clear that the creation of the United States was not some foregone conclusion, made all but inevitable because of the widespread passion and fervor of everyone living on these shores. No, we were a fractured people – and it was only because of the relentless passion of a small group of visionary men … in the face of what seemed like impossible odds … that those differences were ultimately wrestled to the ground and this world-changing document was allowed to emerge – tainted by painful compromises, to be sure, but still a document that altered everything. That story is told brilliantly here – and whether one already knows that story well or is perhaps learning it for the very first time, it is hard not to be completely captivated by it. I also applaud the fact that Peter Stone (the author of the book) did not shy away from some of the messiness of the issues at play here. Another brilliant move was for him to include periodic dispatches from General George Washington, each one sounding progressively more desperate and doomed. That added an additional level of suspense and even dread without crowding the plot- and the stage- with more than we could take in. But it was there. And the twin love stories of John and Abigail Adams and Thomas and Martha Jefferson leavens the heavy political content of the show to just the right degree.
By the final two or three minutes of the show, I was crying. It was in part because I often cry when I’m experiencing tremendous excellence as an audience member. But I think I was also crying because this performance gave me something that I did not expect to feel: hope. We are living in an America that feels more divided than we have ever been – which, of course, cannot possibly be literally true. But to many of us it feels that way, in a way that shakes many of us to the core of our being. To some extent the major divisions of our day have been there for a long time- but we are suddenly awakened to them. And as we confront a host of formidable challenges as a nation, it is hard not to think of the words of Lincoln: A House Divided Cannot Stand. Is there a path out of this painfully divided state in which we find ourselves as a nation? Or will that divide only deepen until we are cleaved and fragmented beyond repair? Will this be the end of us or the end to what we stand for? The show 1776 is a potent reminder that our nation was created in an atmosphere every bit as rancorous as that which we see today – and if anything, they were confronting a situation far more hopeless, far more frightening. But they found common ground. They found a way to embody one of our nation’s most emblematic mottos: E Pluribus Unum. Out of Many, One. This show was created in the late 1960’s, at a time when our nation was painfully fractured. Perhaps one reason that people flocked to this show the way that they did was because it gave them then what it gives to us now: gratitude for those who forged that difficult road to independence back in 1776 ….. and hope that we can live up to those ideals in the challenging days before us. Other words of Lincoln come to mind: The situation is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion.
They did. And so can we. As a matter of fact, we already are.
