1776 poster. (Wikipedia)

“1776” Dramatizes the Discord that Threatens a Union

By Donald H. Sanborn III

“A cataclysmic earthquake, I’d accept with some despair. But no, you sent us Congress / Good God, sir, was that fair?” an exasperated John Adams sings in “Piddle, Twiddle, and Resolve,” a song heard early in the musical 1776.

1776 depicts the signing of the Declaration of Independence; and the delicate, often adversarial discussions and negotiations that were required for that event to occur. By turns candid, funny, and intense, the show allows us to realize that polarization is built into the nation’s fabric.

As such, it is apt that, in honor of the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration, several theaters around the country will be staging the musical later this season. Among them are Philadelphia’s Walnut Street Theatre (the oldest venue in the U.S., having opened in 1809) and the Paper Mill Playhouse in Millburn.

Sherman Edwards at the 46th Street Theatre, in 1969. (Courtesy Valerie Edwards)

From Presley to 1776

1776 was conceived by Sherman Edwards, who wrote the music and lyrics. The book is by Peter Stone (though Edwards drafted an initial version).

Following his service in World War II, Edwards (1919-1981) spent about a year teaching American History at James Monroe High School in New York City. His early songwriting career entailed creating songs for (among other pop stars) Elvis Presley. Among these were the title song for the film Flaming Star, and “Big Boots” for G.I. Blues (both written with Sid Wayne).

In the late 1950s Edwards began work on 1776, initially writing both the score and the libretto. In Broadway: The American Musical, Laurence Maslon and Michael Kantor quote Edwards: “I wanted to show [the founding fathers] at their outermost limits. These men were the cream of their colonies … they understood commitment, and though they fought, they fought affirmatively.”

Valerie Edwards, the composer-lyricist’s daughter, says that her earliest memory of his work on the show is of him “at the piano in his studio. I was maybe 4 or 5 years old. I grew up with this show; I was essentially raised on the music, book, and lyrics. My Dad would be singing and playing on the piano, and experimenting with different versions of songs. That was a constant in our life.”

Despite Edwards’ experience as a pop songwriter — and 1776 opening around the time of the rock musicals Hair and Jesus Christ Superstar — the score for 1776 does not evoke pop music of the period, instead drawing on devices used in more traditional musical theater of the time (along the lines of Rodgers and Hammerstein).

One characteristic of the music is the use of choral waltzes; this choice reflects lines in the song “Cool, Cool, Considerate Men” which liken politics to dancing. John Hancock sings that, despite his differences with Adams, he prefers to dance Adams’ “new gavotte” rather than the “minuet” of the more conservative members of the Continental Congress.

“The language we hear from Benjamin Franklin is different from the language we hear from John and Abigail Adams,” says Valerie Edwards. “The lyrics, I think, are so brilliantly conceived because he selected choices that tell the story, support the romance, show the loneliness and the longing for each other — but also give the color of the individual characters and their life together as New Englanders. I love that.”

Eventually librettist Peter Stone (1930-2003)was engaged to rewrite the book. Maslon and Kantor quote Stone as observing, “You knew immediately that John Adams and the others were not going to be treated as gods or cardboard characters, chopping down cherry trees … it wasn’t reverential.”

Valerie Edwards observes that her father “saw John Adams as a hero with whom he could relate.  From a storytelling point of view, Adams was the perfect hero; he was the underdog. He made everybody feel uncomfortable. He was bringing up stuff that he felt needed to change, that was … causing a tremendous amount of risk. Adams was a divisive figure in many ways. He was scrappy, egotistical, and he had to find ways to collaborate with the other folks in the Continental Congress … to get the dream [of American independence] realized.”

Eryn LeCroy, one of the actors from the 2022 revival, relates a crucial piece of history that she learned from the show. She notes that Thomas Jefferson — despite being a slaveholder — included a passage in the Declaration of Independence that condemned “the ‘execrable commerce’ of slavery.”

“Towards the end of the show, the Congress is debating what the final language of the Declaration is going to be,” she says. “They read this paragraph — and for the sake of unanimity, they tell Jefferson he has to cross that paragraph out. Otherwise the Congress is not going to come to an agreement.” This is conveyed in the song “Molasses to Rum.”

LeCroy adds that watching Jefferson “cross out that paragraph every night — the emotional tension of that was indescribable; you could hear a pin drop in the audience when that moment happened!”

Valerie Edwards points out “a line in the show, where Adams is accusing Franklin of sacrificing one of the key components: ‘You should have your credentials renewed, Franklin! How can you possibly condone removing the slavery clause?’ Franklin’s ‘big picture’ response is, ‘If we don’t have this Declaration, we don’t have anything.’ That’s not the actual dialogue, but essentially Franklin was saying, ‘We would all love to have this slavery clause retained. But if we don’t compromise here, we have nothing.’”

Today what Edwards perhaps appreciates most is that the show “required so much persistence, and so much time. My father had a vision, and there were so many people who said, ‘You can’t possibly produce it. No one’s going to be interested in a show about the American Revolution.’”

“My father was undeterred,” she adds. “He was able to sit at the piano and plug the entire show from beginning to end. He did that over and over again, with years’ worth of producers saying, ‘Nope, nope’ — until finally, producer Stuart Ostrow was interested. When you believe in something, and you’re an artist, you just keep going until you get to ‘yes.’ To the public, the show was an overnight sensation. But it wasn’t; it took years of background work in order to make it happen.”

President Richard Nixon with the cast of the musical 1776 after a performance in the East Room of the White House. Valerie Edwards notes that the song “Cool, Cool Considerate Men” was omitted from this performance because “Nixon considered it to be too controversial — and too anti-conservative.” (Wikipedia/White House Photo Office – US government, Executive Office of the President)

Original Broadway Run

1776 opened on Broadway on March 16, 1969. Its first home was the 46th Street Theatre (now the Richard Rodgers, which currently houses Hamilton). The show won the Tony Award for Best Musical, as well as Best Direction of a Musical.

Peter Hunt directed the production. William Daniels starred as John Adams. The cast also included Virginia Vestoff as Abigail Adams, Ken Howard as Thomas Jefferson, and Betty Buckley as Martha Jefferson. Howard Da Silva, the original actor playing Benjamin Franklin, became ill and had to be replaced by Rex Everhart. Da Silva was unable to participate in the original cast recording, but he reprised the role in the 1972 film.

One of the musicians in the original pit orchestra was Stanley “Buzz” Brauner (1930-2001). A woodwind player, Brauner “was a big band musician, playing with the Dorsey brothers,” says his son, Steve Brauner. As the Big Band era faded, “a lot of the Big Band swing musicians needed work, so they took jobs in the pit on Broadway. My dad did that.”

1776 was orchestrated by Eddie Sauter, with vocal arrangements by Elise Bretton. Steve Brauner recalls that his father’s primary instruments for the show were “clarinet, flute, and piccolo. Being a show about the Declaration of Independence, the orchestrations give the piccolo a big part, in imitation of fife and drum corps.” He adds that a harpsichord was used, to aid in establishing the time period.

Peter Howard scored the dance arrangements for 1776, and was the show’s musical director. Brauner shares a fond memory: “My dad would take me backstage, and into the pit. (I was 6 or 7 years old.) In the back of the pit, where the woodwinds sat, you couldn’t really see the stage. So Peter invited me up onto the podium to sit next to him during a matinee performance. When the dialogue was going on Peter leaned over, pointed up at the stage, and whispered, ‘It’s John Adams’ or, ‘That’s Ben Franklin.’ That experience really helped me love musical theater.”

Brauner also recalls, “The production had minimal scenery. The stage was set up like Independence Hall. When they were doing scenes outside of the chamber, they had two walls that pulled together [to form the exterior of the chamber].”

“The end of the show was very dramatic, because as the founders were signing the Declaration, they had the percussionist in the orchestra using chimes to imitate the sound of the Liberty Bell being rung,” Brauner adds. “As the founders were signing, the actors all took a pose, and froze on stage. A scrim came down in front of them, and they projected the Declaration of Independence onto that, with the actors frozen in the background.” The final tableau imitates John Trumbull’s painting Declaration of Independence.

Asked whether her father felt that the Broadway production fully realized his vision for the show, Valerie Edwards replies, “Absolutely. My family, friends, and I were having an after-show supper at Sardi’s restaurant. We were all waiting for the reviews to come out. Hours later the reviews from The New York Times and the other publications started coming in — and they were good. I remember my father sitting down, pushing up his glasses, and just weeping — with relief and joy, and what I understood later as satisfaction.”

Edwards adds. “One of the last lines is John Hancock saying, ‘Everybody better come and sign this, because I’m still the only one whose name is on the damn paper, and I’m going to be the first to be hanged!’ The risk that they were taking was quite profound. My father was satisfied that the show conveyed all the nuances — the highs and the lows, the depth and the breadth — of the experiences of the people back then.”

Sara Porkalob, Oneika Phillips, Sushma Saha, Joanna Glushak, Nancy Anderson, and Eryn LeCroy in the American Repertory Theater / Roundabout Theatre Company production of 1776. (Photo by Evan Zimmerman for Murphy Made)

Revivals

1776 has been revived twice on Broadway. A 1997 production opened at Criterion Center Stage Right before moving to the Gershwin Theatre (currently home to Wicked). Directed by Scott Ellis, the revival starred Brent Spiner as John Adams.

More recently a 2022 revival, co-produced by American Repertory Theater (A.R.T.) and Roundabout Theatre Company, played at the American Airlines (now Todd Haimes) Theatre. It was directed by Jeffrey L. Page and Diane Paulus, with choreography by Page.

“One aspect of our show that was very different from the original production (and the subsequent 1997 revival) was our casting,” explains Eryn LeCroy. “Our cast was comprised of female, nonbinary, and transgender actors, from diverse ethnic and racial backgrounds. Our co-directors, Diane Paulus and Jeffrey L. Page, were dedicated to having the modern audience view this cast of actors, in 1776, who represent what America is today.”

LeCroy adds, “One thing to take into consideration is that every single person you would see on that stage, myself included, would not have been allowed inside Independence Hall in 1776. So for us to have the opportunity to step into those shoes, and to speak some of those words, was really remarkable.”

The revival, which closed in January 2023 (to be followed by a national tour starting in February), generated quite a bit of controversy, with strong opinions both in favor and in opposition to it. But Valerie Edwards says that she and her brother, Keith Edwards, unequivocally support it.

“That cast really spoke to how we can reframe the need for independence, liberty, and freedom,” she says. For her, the fact that “it was so successful, and that there was so much pushback to try and quash it from being able to be put on stage, tells us that we really struck a nerve.”

Eryn LeCroy in the American Repertory Theater / Roundabout Theatre Company production of 1776. (Photo by Evan Zimmerman for Murphy Made)

Eryn LeCroy as Jefferson and Hall

LeCroy, a soprano, has the distinction of having been traditionally and non-traditionally cast. She portrayed both Martha Jefferson and Georgia delegate Dr. Lyman Hall.

She recalls that her family moved to the Princeton area when she was “about 13.

I sang with the Princeton Girlchoir for about a year and a half.” Several years later, after she had debuted on Broadway, “I did an (online) Q&A and masterclass with them, during the pandemic. It was wonderful to reconnect with them in that way.”

LeCroy also benefited from musical training elsewhere in the area; she took voice lessons with Lawrence Township-based opera singer Dauri Shippey; and piano lessons at Westminster Choir College.

She made her Broadway debut as Christine in The Phantom of the Opera from late 2018 to early 2020. She is reprising the role Off-Broadway in Masquerade, which is directed by Paulus.

LeCroy’s audition process for 1776 entailed singing Martha’s key number “He Plays the Violin” multiple times for the creative team; and cold reading a segment of the Declaration of Independence. She was cast not long before the pandemic; rehearsals began right before Broadway shut down. “We had two days of in-person workshops … we explored choreography for some of the material,” she says.

During the pandemic, “In April 2020 we had two weeks’ worth of Zoom rehearsals,” LeCroy recalls. “We had a read-through of the script with our whole company. We had design presentations; we also had lectures from Harvard professors, because Diane is the artistic director of American Repertory Theater, which is affiliated with Harvard in Cambridge.”

“We had that period for two weeks, and then the production was postponed for two years,” she continues. “We finally got to start rehearsals in April 2022, in New York City.”

LeCroy recalls a unique aspect of the production’s staging and costume design. At the beginning of the show “the actors would enter wearing modern, everyday clothing. Lined up at the edge of the stage were traditional black Colonial shoes, with little gold buckles on them. We would … step into those shoes and put on a traditional, Colonial-style jacket — and then become and embody those characters, while also maintaining aspects of who we are.”

She adds, “We didn’t really use wigs in the show; that was an intentional design choice. The way my hair is now, curly and long, is the way I wore it as Dr. Lyman Hall — just so you could see that there’s an element of me that’s here, too.”

Asked about her preparation for the show, and her approach to her dual roles, LeCroy explains, “I didn’t really approach them vastly differently. I started my research online, and I was able to find a lot of information about Dr. Lyman Hall. But as I was researching Martha Jefferson, I actually found very little. So, I reached out to the research librarian at Monticello and discovered that there’s very little known about Martha Jefferson — they say that it’s likely that Thomas Jefferson would have destroyed any of their mutual correspondence.”

She continues, “But the librarian was kind enough to put me in touch with Nicole Brown, who portrayed Martha Jefferson at Colonial Williamsburg. Nicole was able to give me personal notes and music that was shared between Martha and Thomas, as well as Martha’s clothing inventory, and transcribed memorandum book as well as references to Martha in various letters written by Thomas and other people.”

Some of LeCroy’s research entailed travel. “Dr. Lyman Hall originally was from Wallingford, Conn. When we were transferring from our rehearsals in New York City to the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Mass., I discovered that Wallingford was on the way to Cambridge. So, on my drive, I found the area of land where Dr. Lyman Hall would have been born. There’s no structure there, but there’s a plaque on that piece of land that is dedicated to him (and identifies it as his birthplace).”

She continues, “Before we started any of our rehearsals, I made a trip to Georgia. There is a place called Midway, to where Dr. Lyman Hall moved later in his life, and was granted some land. While there’s no standing structure, I saw the land that was granted to him; and again, there’s a historical plaque that’s placed there. He was part of St. John’s parish, so there’s a church there (the original structure burned down during the Revolutionary War; the structure that’s there was built in 1792).”

“What was moving is that I got to literally walk in the footsteps of these people, by visiting places where they would have spent part of their lives,” LeCroy says. “That was some invaluable research for me, as I prepared both of these characters.”

LeCroy recalls one of her favorite moments in the show. “Elizabeth A. Davis, who played Thomas Jefferson, is an incredible violinist,” she says. “Our music team had discovered, through their research, the Scottish love ballad “Broom of the Cowdenknowes” — a violin piece that Thomas Jefferson loved to play. In ‘He Plays the Violin’ there was a musical interlude in which Jefferson comes on stage and plays that piece. That was one of my favorite moments, because we took this piece, literally from history, and put it in our show. Our creative team did such an incredible job of taking these interesting aspects of history, and fusing that with a more current perspective.”

Sushma Saha, Sara Porkalob, Mehry Eslaminia, Gisela Adisa, Crystal Lucas-Perry, Elizabeth A. Davis, Becca Ayers, Brooke Simpson, and Oneika Phillips in the American Repertory Theater / Roundabout Theatre Company production of 1776. (Photo by Evan Zimmerman for Murphy Made)

“1776 is Right Now”

Valerie Edwards reemphasizes that 1776 has nothing to do with a jingoistic retelling of history. “This show is a challenge to say to the audience: ‘Democracy is something that has to be constantly fought for, reframed, and supported all the time. It requires just the state of mind that is illustrated in this show, by John Adams and all the people that were risking their lives, and risking their fortunes, and risking their health, in order to move this project forward — and fight for liberty, justice, and freedom.”

Becoming increasingly impassioned as she speaks, Edwards continues, “Obviously we are a wildly imperfect nation, but this is an aspirational story. This show is not nostalgia, which is why it is necessary to keep producing it in as many different variations as possible. 1776 is right now.”

Edwards hopes that the show will make audiences ask themselves, “What’s my relationship to this country? How am I responsible for upholding and defending this democracy?” She appreciatively reflects on an upbringing in which she saw her family “engaged in creating art that championed the ideals of a free, fair, and just society.”

To learn about Eryn LeCroy’s current and upcoming performances, visit erynlecroy.com or follow her on Instagram at @erynlecroy.

Upcoming Productions of 1776

Paper Mill Playhouse (Millburn): April 1-May 2. A Q&A with the cast will follow the matinee performance on April 18. According to broadwayworld.com, the theater has been awarded a grant of $25,000 to stage the production. The grant comes from the National Endowment for the Arts, in connection with Celebrating America250: Arts Projects Honoring the National Garden of American Heroes.

Opening night is set for Sunday, April 5 (following a brief preview period) in a run continuing through Saturday, May 2. For more information, visit papermill.org/1776-2. For more information, visit papermill.org/1776-2.

Walnut Street Theatre (Philadelphia): April 14-May 31. For details, visit walnutstreettheatre.org.

Surflight Theatre (Beach Haven): August 18-30. For details, visit surflight.org.