Still Wrangling After All These Years

It’s hard to imagine anyone writing a musical comedy about the wranglings of Congress in 2012. If someone can find a way to set John Boehner’s or Bernie Sanders’ words to music, more power to them, although I don’t think I’d want to go see it. But the stakes were higher, and the characters more compelling, in 1776, and this musical, though occasionally hoary, still has the power to entertain and instruct. “1776” first opened in 1969, and nobody had high hopes for a patriotic musical written by a former American history teacher (and writer of popular songs for Elvis, among others). Yet it somehow beat out “Hair” for best musical and has been revived on Broadway several times since. (I saw the 1997 version with Brent Spiner, which was excellent.) It’s arrived in our area just in time for the Fourth of July, presented by the Rhinebeck Theatre Company at the Center for Performing Arts. Funny and very non-reverential, the show tells the story of the weeks leading up to the adoption of the Declaration of Independence, when the representatives of the 13 colonies were wrestling with whether to break away from England or to trade freedom for the protection (or tyranny, depending on which side you were on) of the more powerful nation. It’s “hot as hell in Philadelphia,” and the members of Congress, busy with trivial matters, don’t want to be there. John Adams, agreed by all to be “obnoxious and disliked,” verges on apoplectic as he rails against the more conservative members who are reluctant to move forward with his proposal for “independancy.” They, in turn, sing “Sit Down, John” and complain about the heat and the flies. He leans on Benjamin Franklin to help him convince the others to come around to his side, and together they devise one stratagem after another to work on the delegates from each state. Daily, he writes his wife Abigail, pouring out his troubles and his loneliness, along with occasional lists of her flaws and requests that she organize the women of Massachussetts to make saltpeter for the Army, which is struggling. Abigail, for her part, is singlehandedly running the farm and raising the children, and insists that in return, John must supply her with pins. Standouts in the large cast include Jim Hammil, as Adams. He nicely understates Adams’ irascibilty and brings out his ironic self-awareness. Victoria Howland as Abigail has a beautiful ringing soprano, and Michael Juzierak captures the Franklin we think we know from the history books — jocular, egotistical, full of witty aphorisms, but pragmatic and willing to compromise when necessary. Doug Hoffman lent dignity and strength to John Dickinson, the Pennsylvanian who hoped to repair America’s damaged relationship with England, and who remained stalwart in his opposition to the end. Tall and taciturn Todd Young plays Thomas Jefferson, the reluctant but proud writer of the Declaration, and Eileen Keeffe as his wife, Martha Jefferson, manages to make the best of the show’s most cringeworthy song, “He Plays the Violin,” one of many overly cute jokes about the sexual needs of men shut away for months from their wives. Cate Olsen’s set made the best of a small stage — the actors sometimes stumbled around the furniture for lack of space to move, and the physical constraints meant that occasionally they blocked each other or themselves when they were speaking. Yet they executed the gavottes and minuets of the minimalist choreography with flair. It’s the least musical musical comedy I know. Famously, one scene lasts well over a half-hour with no music at all. But it’s gripping on its own. As resolutions are made and seconded, the men engage in passionate debate (and the occasional fistfight), while personal dramas and the flaws of ordinary men influence the course of history. And as the last vote of “yea” is achieved and the curtain falls, the audience might wish that the ordinary men and women charged with governing the United States today could unite for a grand purpose. Now that would be something to sing about. “1776” plays through July 22 at the Center for Performing Arts in Rhinebeck. Tickets: 845-876-3080 or go to www.centerforperformingarts.org