Theater Review: 1776

 

Creating a new nation is no easy chore, as anyone who’s read about the writing of the U.S. Declaration of Independence can attest. 

Founding father John Adams (from Massachusetts) was determined to see it passed, but the delegates also included southerners who wanted to keep their slaves, others who weren’t sure about this or that way of saying things, and some who weren’t convinced about anything. The notion that the Declaration was written quickly and voted on promptly is fiction, as Sherman Edwards and Peter Stone’s crazy musical “1776” shows. 

The Tony Award-winning Best Musical of 1969 was made into a film and later revived on Broadway in 1997. It was revived again in 2022 with a cast made of people who identify as female, trans, non-binary and gender nonconforming. It’s this version that plays through May 14 at San Diego Civic Theatre.

The real star of the show is, of course, the never-give-up Adams, played wonderfully by Gisela Adisa. She is aided by many others, but principally two women: Adams’ wife Abigail (Tieisha Thomas) and Thomas Jefferson’s wife Martha (Connor Lyon).

The directors (Jeffrey L. Page and Diane Paulus) are anxious to bring the ideas up-to-date, to which end they’ve added lines like Abigail’s words “All men would be tyrants if they could,” and characters like Robert Hemings, the slave who waited on Jefferson as he wrote “all men are created equal.”

In the second act, the group focuses on doing the job of actually writing the document. By the time they’ve finished, two and a half hours have passed.

Subtle this show is not, but it certainly is colorful (pun intended) with costumes, sometimes clever songs, nifty dance routines and many spectacular voices. The problem this old critic found is that it’s difficult to understand the songs and even some of the dialogue. I found myself too often wondering what was being said or sung. The theater’s sound system could be at least in part responsible, but I hope they can fix it so that all those words will be understood.

If you’re in the mood for a little history, try “1776.”