TT: They sing! They dance! They debate!

Just because the Broadway strike is settled doesn’t mean I’m going to forget about all those out-of-town companies I’ve been talking up for the past few weeks. In today’s Wall Street Journal I review Goodspeed Musicals’ 1776 (in Connecticut) and Paper Mill Playhouse’s Meet Me in St. Louis (in New Jersey). Here’s a preview of the column.
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Goodspeed Musicals’ revival of “1776” was the first time I’d seen Peter Stone’s rousing salute to the Founding Fathers onstage since the original road-show version came to St. Louis 35 years ago. That production was a spectacular piece of work whose quick-change set (designed by the legendary Jo Mielziner) is still clear in my mind’s eye. I wondered how Goodspeed could squeeze the whole show onto the tiny stage of its 130-year-old theater without breaking something, but no sooner did the red-white-and-blue curtain go up on Michael Schweikardt’s handsome-looking version of the Chamber of the Continental Congress than I knew I was in good hands. Goodspeed’s “1776” is a masterpiece of compression, a production that more than makes up in stylishness for what it lacks in costly gimmickry.
“1776,” of course, tells the story of the writing of the Declaration of Independence. That isn’t exactly your stock musical-comedy plot, and for all the show’s not-infrequent moments of cartoonishness, it’s gratifying to see how seriously Stone (who wrote the book) and Sherman Edwards (who wrote the songs) took their task. In between the one-liners, “1776” paints a clear-eyed picture of the hard-nosed give and take of political compromise….
Like “1776,” Paper Mill’s “Meet Me in St. Louis” profits from being performed on a good-looking set. Rob Bissinger’s rendering of 5135 Kensington Avenue, the best-known imaginary address in Hollywood, is a life-sized, candy-colored dollhouse whose walls swing open to reveal a turn-of-the-century living room. Denis Jones’ staging of the musical numbers is equally eye-catching–I’ve never seen better choreography in a regional musical-comedy production–and the cast tears into his steps with the right mix of precision and high spirits. I wish Mark S. Hoebee, the director, had dialed down the cuteness a notch or two, but it never gets out of hand, and several of the performers, especially JB Adams and Roni Caggiano, are as good as you could possibly hope for….
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To read the whole thing, go here. (Please e-mail me if you have any trouble with this link!)