MaKe MoNeY TaLkS OnLiNe

For any schoolkid, learning about the American Revolution and the signing of the Declaration of Independence is a standard part of the curriculum. But what’s normally a topic to be read about in the history books takes on a whole new dimension in the Peter Stone-Sherman Edwards musical comedy “1776.”

Appropriately enough for the upcoming celebration of that day in history, the Croswell Opera House’s production of “1776” opens this Friday — July 4 — with a special curtain time of 7 p.m. due to the holiday. The show continues Saturday at 8 p.m., Sunday at 3 p.m., July 10-12 at 8 p.m., and July 13 at 3 p.m.

Orchestra and lower-balcony tickets are $25 regular admission, $22 for senior citizens, $20 for students and $15 for children 12 and under. Upper-balcony seats are $20 for adults and senior citizens, $18 for students and $10 for children 12 and under.

For reservations or more information, call the Croswell at 264-7469 or go online at www.croswell.org.

While Stone did draw from actual accounts of the time in writing his musical, “1776” isn’t exactly an historically accurate rendering of events. But what it does do, said Karl Schmidt, who plays John Adams, is make real people out of the characters in the textbooks.

“The thing we hope this story does is breathe life into these people,” Schmidt said. Over time, the Founding Fathers have become larger than life — “we’ve deified them,” he said — but this musical shows their humanity, most often in a lighthearted way. There’s Adams with his hot temper, Ben Franklin with his gout, Thomas Jefferson the dreamer whose heart wasn’t in writing the Declaration because he just wanted to go home and be with his wife.

The show opened on Broadway in 1969 and promptly won three Tony Awards including Best Musical. Many of its original cast members, including William Daniels as Adams, Ken Howard as Jefferson, Howard Da Silva as Franklin, Ron Holgate as Richard Henry Lee, and Virginia Vestoff as Abigail Adams, reprised their roles for the 1972 film version.

Two interesting bits of trivia are connected with the show. The 20-minute span of time between the songs “The Lees of Old Virginia” and “But Mr. Adams” apparently holds the record for the longest span of time in a musical without any actual music. And, as the story goes, one of the tunes, “Cool Considerate Men,” was left out of the film version (but restored for home-video) because President Nixon, a friend of producer Jack Warner, thought it didn’t reflect well on the Republicans.

Schmidt hadn’t seen “1776” until the movie version of it came out. “I loved it so much I went back to see it four or five times,” he said.

The classically trained tenor, who teaches music at Hillsdale College and Concordia University, has performed with numerous opera companies and symphony orchestras including the Michigan Opera Theatre, the Toledo Opera, Opera Mid-Michigan, the Arbor Opera, the Detroit Symphony, the Dearborn Symphony, and the Southwest Michigan Symphony. Among other roles, he’s performed as the Pirate King in “Pirates of Penzance,” Eisenstein in “Die Fledermaus,” Don Jose in “Carmen,” Rodolfo in “La Boheme,” Alfredo in “La Traviata,” and in the title role in “Sweeney Todd.”

“I just love the theater,” he said. In fact, while he’s done a wealth of oratorio and other concert work, he especially enjoys being able to create a character onstage, doing research and making choices on how to portray the person.

“1776” marks Schmidt’s Croswell debut. He first saw a show there when a colleague on the Hillsdale voice faculty, Eden Casteel, sang the role of Mabel in 2007’s “Pirates of Penzance,” and when the opportunity came along this summer to play Adams, he knew he wanted to do the role.

He’s fascinated by that period of U.S. history and by John Adams. “People tell me I have some of his traits,” he laughed, although “I try not to be obnoxious and disliked,” which is a recurring criticism of Adams in the show by the other members of the Continental Congress.

One of those fellow patriots, Thomas Jefferson, is played by Bruce Hardcastle.
Hardcastle, a longtime Croswell veteran, wanted to be in the show because it has such a large cast of men — in fact, there are only two women in the entire show, and they only appear briefly: Abigail Adams, who’s played by Suzanne Ogden, and Martha Jefferson, played by Emily Gifford.

“It’s unique. It’s fun to listen to,” he said of getting to sing with a group of other men. “And it’s fascinating to sit there (onstage) and watch.”

To him, the show does a great job of depicting the “everyman” qualities of the men who signed the Declaration of Independence and founded a new country against enormous odds. “It just shows that a lot of people in Congress were just members of society,” he said. “They weren’t professional politicians.”

He did some Internet research on Jefferson to help him prepare for his role. “He was a pretty fascinating man,” he said. “It’s good to understand your character and learn more about him.”

For him, the role is both fun and a challenge. “But that’s why I do this,” he said.

Other members of the Croswell’s cast include Steve Hillard, Charles Thomson, Lance Weismann, Leo Zania, Randy Guernsey, George Reasoner, Tim Brayman, Edmond Reynolds, David Curtis, Peter Stewart, Bill Priest, Charlie Steffens, Peter Mackey, Brian Swain, Kevin Kelly, Joe Dennehy (who is also the show’s choreographer), Jesse Montie, Ryan Buehler, Kim Greenfield, Rick Vaught, Seth Wass and Matt Decker.
The show is directed by G.L. Blanchard, with Rich Alder providing music direction, costume design by Barb Moelaart, and set design by Leo Babcock.

Blanchard said it was somewhat of a challenge for him to cast a show that calls for some two dozen men and only two women, especially coming right on the heels of “Titanic” — another show that needs lots of male actors — but “we were pretty lucky. I cast just about everybody who was available,” he said.

Although “1776” is one of those shows where the audience pretty much knows what’s going to happen — after all, there’s no suspenseful wondering whether or not the Declaration is really going to get signed — Gerry Blanchard, who directs the Croswell’s production, thinks the whole idea of watching the story unfold onstage is what draws people to it.

“When I first heard they were making a musical out of this, I said, ‘They’re out of their minds,’” he laughed. “But I think it’s the fact that you actually see how it worked. … We all wish that our government worked that way today, with people compromising.

“It brings to life the Founding Fathers … (and) I think there’s a lot of relevance today,” he said.

“But it’s a lot more than that. It’s just really good theater.”