Democracy, Broadway-style

The Tony-winning musical 1776 does what very few musical comedies (or history teachers) can do—it makes American history thrilling. 1776 is about the events leading up to the creation and signing of the Declaration of Independence. It’s historically accurate, but it doesn’t pretend to be a docudrama, even though writer Peter Stone and composer-lyricist Sherman Edwards took very few liberties when they set America’s defining moment to music.

The show has had an odd and somewhat disconcerting history. When 1776 premiered in 1969, its creators evidently had a bit too much fun portraying the political issues and strong personalities within the Continental Congress. The play reminds theatergoers that the birthing of democracy was a labor-intensive business, involving years of bloody insurgencies and lots of partisan squabbling. Then-President Nixon, worried about upcoming elections, is said to have requested that a pivotal song portraying conservatives as anti-independence be cut from the film version. (It was.) Odder still, in 2004, Fairfax County, Virginia—part of the DC metro area and home to thousands of government honchos—banned the film from being shown in its schools because of a line of dialogue suggesting that Thomas Jefferson had a fiery libido. It’s all very strange, considering the show commemorates the birth of the United States, not its desecration.

The local version gets the full Guthrie treatment, with a cast of twenty-seven and period costumes aplenty. It’s also a unique opportunity to see a Guthrie veteran and a promising newcomer play opposite one another. Peter Michael Goetz (Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman) plays the witty, occasionally somnolent Ben Franklin. Thomas Jefferson, the thirty-three-year-old, redheaded, violin-playing icon of independence, is played by the thirty-one-year-old, auburn-haired, violin-playing Tyson Forbes, who moved here from Colorado in 2005. This is his first major role in town.

Director John Miller-Stephany says Goetz is an ideal Franklin and has a lovely voice, despite the actor’s modesty. “I have to have music pounded into me,” says Goetz.

A celebration/love song about our nation and the principles on which it was founded, 1776 is great summer fare. When we applaud the show, we’re also applauding the rights our Founding Fathers fought so hard to attain. Happy birthday, America. June 23–Aug. 17. 818 S. 2nd St., Mpls., 612-377-2224

Reach Jaime Kleiman at jaime@jaimekleiman.com.