Friday, July 4, 2014

"....On This Humid Monday Morning In This Congressional Incubator!"

Happy Independence Day, America! In honor of our nation's 238th birthday, I am going to post about a musical that (inaccurately) shows the audience an insight as to what happened while our Founding Fathers were discussing American Independence and signing the Declaration of Independence, with the approval of both strongly encouraged by John Adams, in seven scenes--the first five scenes are Act 1, and the last two are Act 2. Yes, I am talking about 1776


There's not really a whole lot to explain in the plot of the musical.....I mean, the representatives from each state gathered in Philadelphia discussed and debated with each other on whether or not to separate from England, who should write the Declaration that physically documents their separation, and any edits that are needed on this parchment (the Slavery clause). Spoiler: they signed it in the end and the colonies broke away from England. 

Nevertheless, the 1969 Broadway performed musical won three Tony Awards which are Best Performance by a Featured Actor in a Musical [Ron Holgate--Richard Henry Lee], Best Direction of a Musical [Peter Hunt} and Best Musical. Despite the show being highly inaccurate (the Declaration was actually officially signed on August 2), it holds the record for the longest time in a musical (at least 30 minutes) where no music is played or sung. There is no kind of music played or song sung between the end of Scene 2 ("The Lees of Old Virginia") to at least midway through Scene 3 ("But Mr. Adams"), where the men are debating independence from England.

 

Fun fact: It was argued that the musical should have been formatted as a play because of the amount of dialogue but Peter Stone (the book writer) believed that the musical numbers helped bring the historical characters to life and made the story more interesting to the audience.

Here is the song called "The Egg", where Adams (man with black hair), Franklin, and Jefferson (and Congress) compare the writing of the Declaration and the creation of a new nation to an egg hatching an Eagle (as proposed by Adams). (Fun fact: the guy that plays John Adams in the 1972 film version of 1776 is William Daniels, who also played Dustin Hoffman's father in the film The Graduate and George Feeny in the '90s TV show Boy Meets World.)





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