The first moments of 1776, a revival of Sherman Edwards and Peter Stone’s 1969 musical, now re-envisioned by Jeffrey L Page and Diane Paulus are, unfortunately, its finest. The company, 22 strong – women, transgender actors and non-binary actors, many of them people of color – stands together in streetwear before changing into the frock coats and buckled shoes worn by members of the Continental Congress. The image is audacious, vivid, clear. What follows is like an antique American flag, more threadbare.
Page is a celebrated choreographer. Paulus is a lively director with an interest in women’s stories – Jagged Little Pill, Gloria: A Life, Waitress. And 1776 is one way to tell more of these stories, but in the manner of a photo negative, highlighting their marked absence. The story of 1776, which follows the broad outlines of history while tweaking the behavior of some of its participants, is a proto-Sorkinesque drama tracing the attempts of John Adams (Crystal Lucas-Perry) to secure a unanimous vote in favor of America’s independence from England. The colonies are divided, with the north largely in favor of the resolution and the south largely against it. By chance, strategy and cunning – with assists from the wisdom of Ben Franklin (Patrena Murray) and the eloquence of Thomas Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence – he acquires the necessary votes.
That declaration famously insists that “all men are created equal”. That formulation excludes women; it also excludes people of color. Page and Paulus’s casting points out that lack. To reallocate a phrase from Hamilton, a clear inspiration, it writes women back into the narrative. Or, to borrow a line from Abigail Adams, it remembers the ladies. Abigail Adams (Allyson Kaye Daniel) is one of only two female characters in the show. The other being Martha Jefferson (Erin LeCroy). The Act I curtain now comes down on her big song, a demented number about how Tom’s fiddle-playing excites her sexually. (A very specific kink.) A showcase for LeCroy’s voice, it is also a failure of imagination of what women might have done and been. Casting, it seems, can only go so far. If there is so much distrust for and impatience with the material – and the distrust is not necessarily wrong – why not just commission something new?
The moral of the original musical suggests that no change is possible without compromise, but this new version argues – again, this is not necessarily wrong – that some compromises are unworthy, that they pervert the cause itself. Here that compromise is the removal of a clause condemning slavery, prefigured by the groundshaker about the triangle trade, sung by Sara Porkalob, Molasses to Rum. This revival’s casting and a searing final image reject this compromise outright, leaving open the question of whether independence, fought and won in just this way, was worth it. That’s a worthy provocation, but the material doesn’t allow the revival to answer it in any real way.
The joys of this production are Stone’s vibrant book and the fun of seeing the cast play their way through it. Lucas-Perry is a dynamic Adams, Murray sports with the gouty Franklin. Carolee Carmello has swagger for days as John Dickinson, Adams’s chief antagonist. If Elizabeth A Davis’s Thomas Jefferson feels somewhat removed and empty, Jefferson was described as the American sphinx, so she may be responding to that. Page generates some nice moments, too, as with some under-the-table choreography for the congressmen’s feet. But this conception offers something less than a full-throated revival of this musical, if indeed this musical needs to be revived at all. It has remembered the ladies. But it can’t make them live.
