1776

Music and Lyrics by Sherman Edwards

Book by Peter Stone

Directed by Gordon Greenberg

Paper Mill Playhouse

22 Brookside Drive, Millburn, NJ

973-376-4343

 

Review by Amy Krivohlavek

 

Independence Day: Singing senators storm into Paper Mill Playhouse in 1776.

 

The year was 1969, and the oft-naked hippies of Hair had just grooved onto Broadway. But guess which show won the Tony Award? A traditional musical that delivered a history lesson on the signing of the Declaration of Independence, nearly 200 years earlier. If Hair is all about being in the now, man, what was it about 1776 that made audiences (and Tony voters) so willing to look to the past?

 

Now that Hair has been transplanted to Broadway again, the Paper Mill Playhouse’s polished production of 1776 offers us an opportunity to consider these shows side by side — this time, during our own moment of political and economic turbulence. Under the lively direction of Gordon Greenberg, 1776 continues to resonate and reverberate. Peter Stone’s book is not so much a plot as a petri dish, in which senators from the original thirteen colonies literally sweat it out while crammed into a fly-infested room in Philadelphia in the unforgiving summer heat. Barbed comments quickly erupt into fisticuffs; if you ever thought politics was boring, just watch these senators snort and seethe (and, yes, sing).

 

Throughout, they are cajoled, lambasted, and verbally jousted by plucky Massachusetts senator John Adams, who pleads for revolution and permanent separation from England. Don Stephenson makes the infamously obnoxious Adams even more repellent with a larger-than-life stage presence and piercingly nasal vocalizations; there’s certainly a reason Pennsylvania senator John Dickinson (Robert Cuccioli) refers to Adams as an “a-gi-ta-tor” (pronouncing each syllable for effect), but Stephenson’s portrayal runs just shy of parody.

 

And although 1776 is, by design, a costume drama, there are real human beings beneath the wigs and knee socks. In particular, Conrad John Schuck (Benjamin Franklin), Kevin Earley (Thomas Jefferson), and Cuccioli do a fine job of locating the personality beneath the persona.

 

Sherman Edwards’s rousing score is a mixed bag, as if to reflect the vast array of voices. The thunderous “For God’s Sake, John, Sit Down” immediately immerses us in the explosive Congressional atmosphere; other songs, however, stop the show in its tracks, despite their charms: Aaron Ramey (as Richard Henry Lee) is delightful in the jaunty “The Lees of Old Virginia”, and James Barbour (as the brooding Edward Rutledge of South Carolina) nearly levitates the roof of the theater with his searing look at slavery in “Molasses to Rum.” The women, of course, play second fiddle here, and Lauren Kennedy (as Martha Jefferson) and Kerry O’Malley (as Abigail Adams) are lovely, but forgettable, presences.

 

It’s oddly thrilling to watch this history in the making, especially an event that formed the backbone of the country that continues to churn and evolve in front of us daily. 1776 is no Hair, but these senators certainly have hair in abundance — no matter the century, maybe there’s not so much of a divide between these hirsute revolutionaries after all.