1776 and All That

...We feel that a man like ourselves can rise for a few moments from the earth, to which he must eventually return...

...Personally, I've never found anything very hilarious about people slamming about the stage as if they were on roller skates...

...The revival of Of Thee I Sing, currently at the New Anderson Theater, has music by George Gershwin that includes such songs as "Wintergreen for President," "Love Is Sweeping the Country," "Who Cares," and the title tune...

...Since I don't expect revelations from the musical theater, I didn't become impatient with the plot...

...And so it went in merry old Philadelphia...

...Not a particularly original joke, perhaps, but nicely woven into the plot...

...Of course, those were well-defined, rational concepts, not just slogans...

...Well, lo and behold, we now have a musical, 1776, designed to prove that history can be fun...

...Paul Hecht as the "villain," John Dickinson of Pennsylvania, should also be mentioned...

...Chase never considered that...

...Throttlebottom (such is the Veep's monicker) keeps showing up at press conferences where nobody will talk to him, pleading to be allowed to make a speech, and wondering what on earth the Vice President is supposed to do...

...How do you suppose he was eventually convinced everything would turn out right...

...If this is not quite a Classics Comics approach to American history, it certainly isn't that heavy German business of documents and accurate quotations either...

...It is silly, but it certainly was not intended as anything except a device to keep the songs rolling, and in that respect it functions rather efficiently...

...The ditty is about family pride?everything good in life, Richard Henry finds, has some connection with his family name.—and when the arguments become rather wild he starts prancing around the stage, forcing Franklin and Adams to join in this paean of praise to his ancestors...

...This, you will recall, concerns the international complications that arise from a promise of matrimony (to a beauty contest winner) made by a certain President Wintergreen...

...His dance is a sort of triumph of the ordinary...

...Rather, a great deal of his peculiar charm always depended on the impression of a difficulty being overcome, of a man not born for flowing movement nevertheless asserting his angular physique...

...The problem may lie with the players, who have been persuaded that the correct acting style for this kind of thing is to cheat front as much as possible, rattle off their cues at a more than lively clip, and smile, damn it, smile...

...There have been objections from some of the newspaper intellectuals about the book by George S. Kaufman and Morrie Ryskind...

...he made Dickinson a generally sensible man, concerned with tangible values, not swayed by high-flown talk of human liberty...

...Just one last question...

...Jokes are meant to be funny to the audience, not to the actors...

...These are filled with largely standard liberal rhetoric...

...Some mildly amusing one-liners get lost in the fast shuffle, and the running gag about the Vice President never makes itself felt...

...But you can see music slowly liberating the man from cautious movement to extravagant gesture...

...Instead, he saw a troop of hungry soldiers down some ducks, and reasoned that men who shot that well were bound to beat the Redcoats...

...Thomas Jefferson labored long and wearily over the Declaration of Independence and wasn't getting anywhere until something happened...

...We want to appeal to their hearts, not their intelligences...

...Since you probably have heard it, we'll dispense with the plot of Come Summer, which may still be running at the Lunt-Fontanne Theater, and lament that Ray Bolger should find himself in a show so utterly predictable, with melodies so terribly drab...

...It is a persistent belief of certain directors that light comedy must be played a mile a minute...

...Bolger may not be so spry as he once was, but his art is less related to athletic prowess than many another dancer's...

...Take the...

...But your kindly old professor has some doubts about whether the American Revolution was really quite so hilarious as Sherman Edwards and Peter Stone imply...

...Although there is some pleasure in the unfolding of Oliver Smith's handsome scenery, in the style of American primitive art, most of the evening is spent waiting for Bolger to dance...

...They say it is ridiculously old-fashioned...

...For when Stone isn't making feeble jests about Franklin's lifelong interest in the ladies, or showing us Jefferson embracing his wife as Franklin and Adams, waiting to be introduced, perform the old "ahem" routine, he finds time to present two interesting debates on the merits of American independence...

...Yet though we know from the stamps on this morning's mail that there is something called the United States of America, Stone somehow manages to work up a little suspense, forcing us to cheer on the would-be Fathers of our Country...

...Again, Kaufman and Ryskind make much of Wintergreen's "Love" platform...

...What was it...

...This brings me to the one about the peddler who settles down with a Yankee farm girl only to feel once more the pull of the open road, and thus experience the awful conflict between hearth and home and a life of freedom...

...That's right...

...None of this is physically remarkable...

...No, no, don't give us an estimate of the military situation...

...I doubt that Lee was so simple an oaf, but no matter...

...That should be sufficient recommendation after the music in this season's musicals...

...Today you can be as disrespectful as you like about politicians, but to suggest that they don't even matter . . . Well, some things just aren't said...

...it attains its real glory from providing the sense that ordinary human clay can somehow, through song and gesture, briefly take wing...

...they brought his wife up to Philadelphia and, thus inspired, Tom got the lead out and started writing, "When in the course of human events . . ." instead of the dull crud he'd been sweating over until then...

...Adams is a revolutionary, which is a good thing...

...In any case, we shall ask a few questions, based on what we have learned from the exhibit at the 46th Street Theater...

...business about the Vice President: It is suggested that the power brokers did not know whom they were nominating and then tried to keep him out of the public eye once the deed was done...

...His best opportunity comes in the final act, during a graveyard sequence...

...Once John revealed his interest in forswearing King George and allowed freedom to be sponsored by the ever-popular Ben Franklin and Richard Henry Lee, it was smooth sailing...

...The strength of the show lies in its book...

...It also seems that Samuel Chase, the delegate from Maryland, had some misgivings about the abilities of the Continental Army as a result of General Washington's gloomy dispatches...

...Edwards and Stone clearly inform us in song and story that the principal obstacle to a Declaration of Independence was the person of John Adams, characterized as "obnoxious and objectionable...

...The good guys—Franklin, Adams and Jefferson—complain about their treatment by King George, and the opposition is more interested in its property than in human rights...

...No, no, Johnny, we don't want to hear any dull stuff about economics or traditional loyalties...

...In fact, for a show that has been heralded by John Chapman as "an artistic creation such as we do not often find in our theater," by Clive Barnes as "a musical with style, humanity, wit and passion," and by Richard Watts as "a brilliant and remarkably moving work of theatrical art," 1776 surprisingly resembles many other musicals in glossing over reality with a little romance, a few dance steps and some indifferent tunes...

...Absurd, of course...

...Much of the entertainment in 7776 is provided by such fine performers as William Daniels as Adams and Howard da Silva as Franklin...

...Whereas Kaufman and Ryskind imply that politics is nothing but a ridiculous fraud...

...Still, I seem to recall in the dim, distant days of 1968 something about "law and order," and further back, "The New Frontier...

...But the antiquated Kaufman and superannuated Ryskind did really have a few mildly pertinent comments...

...Here Bolger starts with a few tentative steps, just a slightly exaggerated walk, and slowly builds this with legs, arms and trunk swinging stiffly, almost awkwardly, then expanding as he flings himself from the floor...

...But only when Ronald Holgate, who plays Richard Henry Lee, starts singing "The Lees of Old Virginia," does 7776 possess the kind of vitality a musical should have...

...I suspect the critics greeted the rather watery history of 1776 with hosannas, and pooh-poohed Of Thee I Sing, because the former keeps a properly reverential tone for the pieties of the day, despite a little horsing around...

...However, it should be noted that the orchestra, consisting of two pianos and rhythm, does not have sufficient volume or color, and that the voices of the principals are a trifle thin, so that you are more often reminded of how good this music might be than overcome by its richness...

...First, why do you think the Continental Congress delayed renouncing the authority of England...

...While Daniels is hardly the crusty New Englander the other characters keep talking about, he has a forceful charm, presents his arguments cogently, and reconciles us to the slightly labored and overly precious exchanges of sentiment with his wife...

...Hol-gate has such a strong feeling for a man who is transported by the sound of his own name that his high spirits are almost palpable and bring down the house...

...It's as if the director had anticipated the critics' impatience with anything less cerebral than the Theory of Relativity and decided that if everyone talked fast enough, the lack of substance might be overlooked...

...That is what musical comedy is all about...

...but at the end of the play he compromises, another good thing...