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1776 revival thoughts
I'm at the airport waiting for my flight home, and I had a really lovely weekend! I'll write more about that later, but for now, thoughts on 1776 while it's relatively fresh in my mind.
Going into this post, you've got to understand: I know every word of this play. I've seen the movie probably 20 times, and I know it start to finish, and it turns out, when they made the film, they used the dialogue directly from the play. So yes, I literally know every word. So I obviously have a lot of feelings about the show. So prepare yourself for my minute opinions!
The first thing to say: making the cast entirely female/non-binary did not really do anything. I feel like they were going for a Hamilton-esque thing where some kind of ~statement~ is being made and...it doesn't work in 2023. The whole reason the Hamilton casting drew such attention was because it was a new stunt (I don't mean stunt in the dismissive way, but I do think it was a stunt). Repeating it again at a slant simply doesn't have the oomph the team behind the show clearly wants it to have.
However. I liked seeing a full cast without any dudes because it lets me admired a bunch of awesome ladies doing great work and because it gives those women a wider range of opportunities than they would otherwise have. I like seeing women in any roles they normally don't get to play! It's fun! I would have committed murder to see Ruth Negga as Hamlet! And I mean, John Adams would absolutely be a dream role of mine if I was in musical theater. I'm glad another woman got to do it! That was nice!
And she was so good! So good! Great big voice! Nice stage presence! Although the lady who played Franklin gave my favorite performance in the show by a wide margin. She was so funny and warm and just fit with the character and tone of the show so completely. I really love Howard da Silva in the original, it was so nice to see this actress do just as good of a job with the role.
I also particularly enjoyed Sherman and the Courier. Everybody else did well but not incredibly. Except for the weak links: Jefferson, who was soooo bland (if I was a meaner person, I would say that they just cast her because she can play the violin and didn't pay attention to literally anything else about her), and the actress who played both Lyman Hall and Martha Jefferson (which I found distracting, since it was the only double role in the show). The less said about them, the better.
There was such a great wide range of body types, races, and gender presentations. Less so with age--I feel like they could have done a bit better with that, especially with casting Stephen Hopkins, who is a crotchety old man, and Cesar Rodney, who is an old man who is DYING. Why cast someone who was clearly pretty young and just slap makeup on them? I mean, they did fine with the roles, but I would have vastly preferred at least a middle aged actress in that role.
My biggest complaints were that I thought the dialogue was rushed in the first half of the show. Not in the not pausing enough sense (I know you can't do that very much in theater), but in the words-per-minute sense. Literally speaking too quickly. It felt like Gilmore Girls fast, and I just don't like that. I know that the show is very long so they were trying to hurry it along, but so many of the best lines didn't land.
There was an easy fix for this, too! CUT THE MARTHA JEFFERSON NUMBER. "He Plays the Violin" is not good song, it adds nothing to the story, the actress didn't bring much to it, and she had ZERO chemistry with the one playing Jefferson, so why did they keep it? I feel like that scene was only in the original show in order to bring another token woman into it (Abigail Adams is MUCH better integrated into the story and always has been) and since we don't NEED that in this play...why keep it in? The only reason I can think for doing so is that they wanted to end on a big musical number before intermission. But that is not a good reason.
Otoh, the reimagining of "Mama, Look Sharp" was such an improvement on the original/the film. I always fastforward that part in the movie (er...I fastforwarded it when I was watching it on VHS as a kid. These days, I skip ahead? Is that what we're calling it?) because it's just...kind of dull and the arrangement doesn't do much for it as a musical number. But the actress playing the Courier (as I said before) was great, and she brought a ton of emotion. The arrangement of the music was superior and so was the staging. For the first time, I felt like that number really does what it's trying to do, which is remind us of the cost in human life that's lying behind all this bickering amongst rich men. It worked.
I was kind of disappointed by the decision to play the "Yours, Yours, Yours" refrain ("Saltpeter! John!") quietly instead of with a big dramatic flourish. That scene in the movie always gives me chills, and it didn't have the oomph in this one. But that's just a personal preference.
The staging overall was very strong, I thought. The opening scene where the actors walk out in contemporary clothing, then take off their jackets and shoes and put on 18th century inspired clothes, including rolling their pants up to mimic knee-britches is very on-the-nose...but hey, I liked it. The decisions to update things were not subtle at all, but I don't really go to musical theater for subtlety, so I didn't care. For instance, when they flashed footage from American history on a screen to the backdrop of the lyrics "the eagle inside belongs to us," I found that very affecting. Same with later when they did something very similar with the "Is Anybody There?" which, again, I am a sucker for. It's manipulating you emotionally, but it's doing it in the service of embracing the full diversity of the American experience, so I'm fine with it.
But you know what sucks? That they didn't update the Jefferson stuff to hold him more accountable. The movie really soft-pedals that stuff, and they didn't go harder in the show, I felt. They added a moment of really obvious hypocrisy, but it wasn't enough. The show overall does a pretty decent job of reckoning with the reality of how slavery pervades everything, but I just feel like they could have done a lot more with it re: Jefferson. They weren't afraid to update other things! Could they just not think of a way to do it?
The orchestra and orchestration were really good imo, and the southern accents were all very bad. Our seats were good and the theater was beautiful.
I overall enjoyed it. It didn't blow me away, but I found it engaging. It absolutely could have been stronger: if I were in charge, I would have been more careful about the casting, cut the Martha number, gone harder re: Jefferson, dialed up the intensity in the saltpeter refrain, etc.
It's not a must-see show unless, like me, you are just crazy about the story. I am SUCH a sucker for audiovisual media about people talking. I just love when the entire plot of something is the communication, the relationships, the give and take, the changing opinions, whatever. I love stories about ideas!!!! 12 Angry Men, The West Wing, Judgement at Nuremberg...these are among my favorite kinds of stories. Just put people who disagree with each other in a room and I get a high off of that the way dudebros get a high off of action films. Bonus points if it's political in nature.
And that's what the show is about. If you like that, it's a good musical for you. If you don't particularly care about those kinds of stories, you probably won't like it, and this production is not strong enough to win you over. Which does feel like a wasted opportunity. But I had a good time this weekend, I'm glad I made this trip, and I am glad I went to see it.
Going into this post, you've got to understand: I know every word of this play. I've seen the movie probably 20 times, and I know it start to finish, and it turns out, when they made the film, they used the dialogue directly from the play. So yes, I literally know every word. So I obviously have a lot of feelings about the show. So prepare yourself for my minute opinions!
The first thing to say: making the cast entirely female/non-binary did not really do anything. I feel like they were going for a Hamilton-esque thing where some kind of ~statement~ is being made and...it doesn't work in 2023. The whole reason the Hamilton casting drew such attention was because it was a new stunt (I don't mean stunt in the dismissive way, but I do think it was a stunt). Repeating it again at a slant simply doesn't have the oomph the team behind the show clearly wants it to have.
However. I liked seeing a full cast without any dudes because it lets me admired a bunch of awesome ladies doing great work and because it gives those women a wider range of opportunities than they would otherwise have. I like seeing women in any roles they normally don't get to play! It's fun! I would have committed murder to see Ruth Negga as Hamlet! And I mean, John Adams would absolutely be a dream role of mine if I was in musical theater. I'm glad another woman got to do it! That was nice!
And she was so good! So good! Great big voice! Nice stage presence! Although the lady who played Franklin gave my favorite performance in the show by a wide margin. She was so funny and warm and just fit with the character and tone of the show so completely. I really love Howard da Silva in the original, it was so nice to see this actress do just as good of a job with the role.
I also particularly enjoyed Sherman and the Courier. Everybody else did well but not incredibly. Except for the weak links: Jefferson, who was soooo bland (if I was a meaner person, I would say that they just cast her because she can play the violin and didn't pay attention to literally anything else about her), and the actress who played both Lyman Hall and Martha Jefferson (which I found distracting, since it was the only double role in the show). The less said about them, the better.
There was such a great wide range of body types, races, and gender presentations. Less so with age--I feel like they could have done a bit better with that, especially with casting Stephen Hopkins, who is a crotchety old man, and Cesar Rodney, who is an old man who is DYING. Why cast someone who was clearly pretty young and just slap makeup on them? I mean, they did fine with the roles, but I would have vastly preferred at least a middle aged actress in that role.
My biggest complaints were that I thought the dialogue was rushed in the first half of the show. Not in the not pausing enough sense (I know you can't do that very much in theater), but in the words-per-minute sense. Literally speaking too quickly. It felt like Gilmore Girls fast, and I just don't like that. I know that the show is very long so they were trying to hurry it along, but so many of the best lines didn't land.
There was an easy fix for this, too! CUT THE MARTHA JEFFERSON NUMBER. "He Plays the Violin" is not good song, it adds nothing to the story, the actress didn't bring much to it, and she had ZERO chemistry with the one playing Jefferson, so why did they keep it? I feel like that scene was only in the original show in order to bring another token woman into it (Abigail Adams is MUCH better integrated into the story and always has been) and since we don't NEED that in this play...why keep it in? The only reason I can think for doing so is that they wanted to end on a big musical number before intermission. But that is not a good reason.
Otoh, the reimagining of "Mama, Look Sharp" was such an improvement on the original/the film. I always fastforward that part in the movie (er...I fastforwarded it when I was watching it on VHS as a kid. These days, I skip ahead? Is that what we're calling it?) because it's just...kind of dull and the arrangement doesn't do much for it as a musical number. But the actress playing the Courier (as I said before) was great, and she brought a ton of emotion. The arrangement of the music was superior and so was the staging. For the first time, I felt like that number really does what it's trying to do, which is remind us of the cost in human life that's lying behind all this bickering amongst rich men. It worked.
I was kind of disappointed by the decision to play the "Yours, Yours, Yours" refrain ("Saltpeter! John!") quietly instead of with a big dramatic flourish. That scene in the movie always gives me chills, and it didn't have the oomph in this one. But that's just a personal preference.
The staging overall was very strong, I thought. The opening scene where the actors walk out in contemporary clothing, then take off their jackets and shoes and put on 18th century inspired clothes, including rolling their pants up to mimic knee-britches is very on-the-nose...but hey, I liked it. The decisions to update things were not subtle at all, but I don't really go to musical theater for subtlety, so I didn't care. For instance, when they flashed footage from American history on a screen to the backdrop of the lyrics "the eagle inside belongs to us," I found that very affecting. Same with later when they did something very similar with the "Is Anybody There?" which, again, I am a sucker for. It's manipulating you emotionally, but it's doing it in the service of embracing the full diversity of the American experience, so I'm fine with it.
But you know what sucks? That they didn't update the Jefferson stuff to hold him more accountable. The movie really soft-pedals that stuff, and they didn't go harder in the show, I felt. They added a moment of really obvious hypocrisy, but it wasn't enough. The show overall does a pretty decent job of reckoning with the reality of how slavery pervades everything, but I just feel like they could have done a lot more with it re: Jefferson. They weren't afraid to update other things! Could they just not think of a way to do it?
The orchestra and orchestration were really good imo, and the southern accents were all very bad. Our seats were good and the theater was beautiful.
I overall enjoyed it. It didn't blow me away, but I found it engaging. It absolutely could have been stronger: if I were in charge, I would have been more careful about the casting, cut the Martha number, gone harder re: Jefferson, dialed up the intensity in the saltpeter refrain, etc.
It's not a must-see show unless, like me, you are just crazy about the story. I am SUCH a sucker for audiovisual media about people talking. I just love when the entire plot of something is the communication, the relationships, the give and take, the changing opinions, whatever. I love stories about ideas!!!! 12 Angry Men, The West Wing, Judgement at Nuremberg...these are among my favorite kinds of stories. Just put people who disagree with each other in a room and I get a high off of that the way dudebros get a high off of action films. Bonus points if it's political in nature.
And that's what the show is about. If you like that, it's a good musical for you. If you don't particularly care about those kinds of stories, you probably won't like it, and this production is not strong enough to win you over. Which does feel like a wasted opportunity. But I had a good time this weekend, I'm glad I made this trip, and I am glad I went to see it.
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Really gotta disagree with you there. I love this song and think it's beautiful (I even sang it in my school's cabaret in 12th grade, though not very well because I completely messed up the key change). I didn't like in this version how much they emphasized the "when I die" part and turned it into a mournful verse. I can see where they're coming from because of how MJ did die young, but the song it so joyful that it still felt misplaced.
Was your Jefferson pregnant?! Mine was very preggo, and I couldn't tell if it was real or if they were putting a fake stomach on the actor because the actor who originated the role in the revival in Boston was pregnant at the time.
Jefferson was by far the weakest link in NYC, too, and I couldn't tell whether the actor was tired from literally being very pregnant or if it was all (very poor) direction.
I was kind of disappointed by the decision to play the "Yours, Yours, Yours" refrain ("Saltpeter! John!")...it didn't have the oomph in this one.
Same!! I was so disappointed. It's such a wonderful, powerful moment, and the John and Abigail in the revival are so good!! Wasted opportunity to showcase them even further.
when they flashed footage from American history on a screen to the backdrop of the lyrics "the eagle inside belongs to us," I found that very affecting.
This is one of the changes I didn't like. I found the images very distracting and didn't think they were even a good mix of visuals for what they were trying to accomplish.
What got me the most and really changed my overall opinion from "meh this was fine" to "I kind of regret spending as much money on this as I did" was how they changed the final stage directions so that the ending didn't match the painting. I understood a lot of the changes they made to highlight the FFs' flaws and try to better represent America, even if I didn't always agree with them (like the visual backdrop), but not ending with the visual of signing the declaration felt a little like a slap in the face. However terrible a lot of those men were, getting the declaration written and signed was, in fact, an accomplishment, and this revival didn't seem to want to recognize that at all, to the point where I left thinking, "Why the fuck did you revive this musical in the first place if you have such disdain for it??" It really left a bad taste in my mouth.
I'm not sure if the Philly cast is the same as the NYC cast, but the strongest ones in the performance I saw were Franklin, Adams, and Dickinson - truly fantastic, all of them. The Rutledge was also good but in a slightly cartoonish, very over-the-top way.
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. I didn't like in this version how much they emphasized the "when I die" part and turned it into a mournful verse. I can see where they're coming from because of how MJ did die young, but the song it so joyful that it still felt misplaced.
Definitely.
Ours was not pregnant! That's so interesting!
Same!! I was so disappointed. It's such a wonderful, powerful moment, and the John and Abigail in the revival are so good!! Wasted opportunity to showcase them even further.
Yup! It's one of the highlights of the story, imo.
but not ending with the visual of signing the declaration felt a little like a slap in the face. However terrible a lot of those men were, getting the declaration written and signed was, in fact, an accomplishment, and this revival didn't seem to want to recognize that at all, to the point where I left thinking, "Why the fuck did you revive this musical in the first place if you have such disdain for it??" It really left a bad taste in my mouth.
Huh. That's not at all how I interpreted it--as they were reading the names out, I saw it as a handing down of the responsibility for the country to us today. But if that's how it came across to you, then I absolutely get why it didn't work for you!!!!
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I still disagree, particularly insofar as the movie goes. If we didn't see Martha and have the sweet marital scene, Tom's whinging about wanting to spend time with his wife over writing the declaration would come across in a much worse light, like he was just lazy and looking for excuses. Instead, the audience (and Adams and Franklin) get more insight into Jefferson and he comes across as much more romantic instead of irresponsible. It also shows a softer side of Adams, and Tom/Martha serve as a foil for John and Abigail's long-distance, more cerebral relationship.
The real issue nowadays as compared to decades ago, IMO, is that we shouldn't be portraying Jefferson as a romantic heroic figure at all. In that regard, I agree that this revival wouldn't have suffered much by removing the song. But that opinion is predicated on Jefferson's character, not the song and its original value to the story.
Ours was not pregnant! That's so interesting!
Verrrry curious. IIRC the actress was pregnant back in the summer when it premiered in Boston (I read about the pregnancy in a review). The actress I saw looked like she was six or maybe even seven months along (a basketball-like bump), so it was theoretically possible it was the same actor and same pregnancy, but it seemed unlikely - but if she wasn't pregnant in the production you saw, maybe it really was the same actress and pregnancy all along!
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The real issue nowadays as compared to decades ago, IMO, is that we shouldn't be portraying Jefferson as a romantic heroic figure at all. In that regard, I agree that this revival wouldn't have suffered much by removing the song. But that opinion is predicated on Jefferson's character, not the song and its original value to the story.
Exactly.
The actress I saw looked like she was six or maybe even seven months along (a basketball-like bump)
WOW. I cannot imagine doing something as high-intensity as musical theater that pregnant! Kudos to her!
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Yes, exactly. I was like, "What is going on here????" and did not think it added anything to the show.
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I think I saw half of the movie once in eighth grade, and otherwise have no idea about this play at all, but I really enjoyed your thoughts, especially what you would have changed! Sometimes it's those little staging decisions that really make a show.
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Thanks! Someday somebody needs to put me in charge of an adaptation!
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I do think the Lee role was double-cast but as a minor supporting character, not a main role.
They weren't afraid to update other things! Could they just not think of a way to do it?
I don't get this. Were they afraid of the focus being on changing Jefferson's role in the musical overshadowing the production? But in for a penny, in for a pound, and I think it would have made it much stronger. At a minimum they didn't have to buy into his blatant lies and hypocrisy, especially when it's *just dialogue*. Like cut stuff, give the lines to someone else, something!
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I didn't even notice!
Were they afraid of the focus being on changing Jefferson's role in the musical overshadowing the production? But in for a penny, in for a pound, and I think it would have made it much stronger. At a minimum they didn't have to buy into his blatant lies and hypocrisy, especially when it's *just dialogue*. Like cut stuff, give the lines to someone else, something!
EXACTLY.