On Broadway, 1776 Still Beats 1619

NEW YORK—It might not be politically correct, but Broadway can’t stop making musicals about the Founding Fathers.

As calls to topple statues of Thomas Jefferson and George Washington swelled in the Trump years, theatergoers flocked to Hamilton, a contemporary reimagining of the arch-Federalist and his ilk. And now, as a growing number of academics locate America’s founding in 1619, we get a revival of 1776.

Of course, this isn’t your father’s 1776. The Roundabout Theater Company’s cast consists entirely of women, nonbinary, and trans actors, most of them black, Hispanic, or Asian. This casting is clearly an attempt to ape Hamilton’s success in a more critical way. While Hamilton used race-blind casting to make the Founders appealing to a contemporary audience, 1776 does so in an attempt to highlight the alleged privilege and hypocrisy of America’s founding.

By that standard, the show is a failure. Rather than lampoon the show’s bicentennial pride, the remarkably talented cast reinvigorates the classic score and unleashes the humor at the heart of Peter Stone’s book. And far from exposing some kind of nefarious hypocrisy, the race- and gender-blind casting only serves to emphasize the enduring relevance—and universal importance—of the American Founding and the freedoms it secured.

1776 follows John Adams (Crystal Lucas-Perry) as he lobbies his colleagues in the Second Continental Congress to declare independence from Great Britain. Personal foibles and political squabbles emerge as Adams clashes with Pennsylvania delegate John Dickinson (three-time Tony Award nominee Carolee Carmello) alongside Benjamin Franklin (Patrena Murray) and Thomas Jefferson, played in this production by a very pregnant Elizabeth A. Davis.

Davis’s pregnancy, like the rest of the cast’s gender, doesn’t really matter to the show. Because musicals always require a suspension of disbelief, the unorthodox casting is far less shocking than it would be in a film. Adams may not have been a black woman, but he also didn’t tap dance at Independence Hall. Obvious political posturing aside, the all-female cast really only matters because the show was written for male voices.

Some of the show’s strongest songs, like “Sit Down, John” and “But Mr. Adams,” fall

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