Profile for mambobean

First off, the cast really is incredible — with truly charismatic performers in lead roles (like Adams and Franklin), a superbly acted villain (the congressman from PA), several great comedians, and an array of killer voices. 

 

Highlights for me: The harmony on the act one “Yours, Yours, Yours” and the two big showstoppers of act two (“Mama look sharp” and the “Molasses/Rum song&rdquo are worth the price of admission by themselves. 

 

The all-female, trans, and non-binary cast was a big draw for me, but I didn’t see much being done with how any of this spoke to gender or how this casting reinvented the characters. There was an addition of text from an Abigail Adams letter to her husband, but the actual women of the piece were limited to a helpmeet and a besotted lover. If you’ve seen the show or work on it, I’d love to know your take on what I missed here.

 

The show is better at showing how racism was in thick of the debate and how our country’s founding literally hinged on it. That is a potent idea and it really gives the last 1/3 of the play a momentum. It seems strange though that the revival keeps the falsity that Jefferson was personally planning to turn a new leaf. (If they can add Abigail’s letter, surely they can cut that?)

 

 I think the final tableau (which calls back one of the play’s best moments) is on the way to sticking the landing but keeping the corny jokes in the scene between the slavery-protecting vote and that final vision mutes how sharp it feels to me.

 

A lot of the music in act one just feels musty and the vaudeville-meets-Poconos jokes often feel ever mustier. There are several numbers that you just have to kind to wait through. Act two is such a vast leap forward in potency. (Though there’s a song that involved documentary footage and a kind of 70s metal arrangement that struck me as a blunt object and a misfire).

 

The show leaves the audience with a much needed reminder about the imperfection of our union, at a moment it seems truer than ever, and when students are literally being kept from knowing any of this, so 1776 feels more vaulable than the catch-all plot grab-bag of Jagged Little Pill, the last ART transfer I saw, but I’m not entirely convinced this production has total command of what its conceits and devices are doing yet. Hopefully this run will help hone that.

 

And obviously this is one person’s subjective take on a preview, so…