Review: 1776 Delivers The Founding 'Mothers' At Theatre Under the Stars

The premise of this touring version of 1776 is what if you took a show cast normally with a bunch of white men, and then cast a diverse troop that are neither white nor men?  I teasingly have been calling this 1776 - THE FOUNDING MOTHERS EDITION all week, and it is finally here at the Hobby Center brought in by Theatre Under the Stars. This is a New York cast hitting Houston for a three night stop of a national tour. My question is, does it really make that much of a statement?  The script for the show remains what it has been since 1776 debuted on Broadway back in 1969.  It is a musical that is infamously dialogue heavy, and it doesn’t have many memorable songs.  Can this women and trans folk cast transform it into something more than simply a hagiography of America’s Founding Fathers?  Or are we just stunt casting to compete with the shadow of far hipper American history shows such as HAMILTON?  

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Regardless of race or gender, this cast is amazing.  They all sing wonderfully, and embody their roles perfectly.  If you are going to take anything away from this production of 1776 it is that a good singer/actor in a musical can sell almost anything.  Gisela Adisa is the quintessential John Adams, and her delivery of him is pitch perfect in both dialogue and song.  Liz Mikel’s Benjamin Franklin is one of the warmest and sunniest deliveries of this role I have seen, and she is a great comedian to boot.  Nancy Anderson is a convincingly introverted yet charismatic fiddle playing Thomas Jefferson. Tiesha Thomas shines as Abigail Adams, delivering her numbers unlike any actress I have heard.  Kassandra Haddock as the diabolical Rutledge from South Carolina makes a tour de force out of her delivery of “Molasses and Rum”.  Each actor up on the stage proves they can take on the “ultimate boys club of Broadway show” without a hitch in any of the dialogue or musical numbers.  They are sublime.  

I did find myself wishing the intent of having this cast was far more clear.  At the start John Adams delivers his first bits, “I have come to the conclusion that one useless man is called a disgrace; that two are called a law firm, and that three or more become a Congress!”  It’s revelatory to hear a black woman deliver this in front of a painting of the white men who made up the historical Congress, but then… she and the cast slip into their clothes and roles and offer no other judgment of them for the next three hours.  About the only other notes of irony come during the trio performance of “The Egg”.  Suddenly turbulent images flash by of modern America, but alas it is so fleeting it barely registers. I wondered what the point was with these jarring events whizzing by while Franklin, Jefferson, and Adams celebrate the birth of America.   

And then when we get to the backstretch, and the endless debates on whether or not to allow slavery in the Declaration of Independence. It plays out like it always does with this one, the historical fact that the document slighted women and people of color.  Hearing a racially diverse cast debate the issues and lose the fight seems hard to swallow.  It begins to feel ill-fitting suddenly, because they are playing it all earnestly.  They allow it all to happen. You wonder, is there nothing new here other than changing the sex of the cast?  There truly isn’t very much.  The revolution you were hoping for does not come.  There is no protest.  There is no grand statement.  The final moments attempt this, but it is too little too late.  

The thing is 1776 was never accurate historically nor was it ever the most entertaining of all musicals.  It is extremely dialogue heavy, and even has a stretch of over thirty minutes without a song to keep the pace up.  It feels bloated now that we are used to musicals that move faster like… well… HAMILTON.  And it doesn’t have much to say, because in the end it was a self-congratulatory piece about the Founding Fathers written in anticipation of the bicentennial of 1976.  Without putting more inventive staging or more protest in it, this is simply a good cast doing an old warhorse book musical.  The show is done well, but it is also done far too traditionally.  But man… what a great cast this one has!  See it for that and that alone.  Because if there is one thing this group does better than most, it’s sing the roof off when they get the chance.  And this is a rare opportunity to see a troop from Broadway do their thing here in Houston.  

1776 runs through July 22nd at the Hobby Center.  There are night shows and a matinee performance on Saturday.  The show is approximately two hours and forty-five minutes long and has a fifteen minute intermission.  At the time of writing it looked like tickets were moving swiftly for this limited run.  

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