1776 (musical): Difference between revisions

{{tropelist}}

* [[Absentee Actor]]: On the original Broadway cast recording, thanks to Howard da Silva's heart attack just before opening night. That's his understudy, Rex Everhart, singing Franklin.

* [[Acting for Two]]: Standard practice in the straw hat circuit tours during the 1970s. Livingston and Morris, the delegates from New York, were frequently played by the same actor. And in a production number cut after the initial tryout, most of the cast doubled as (mostly incompetent) soldiers.

* [[Aluminum Christmas Trees]]: The show is filled with odd or bizarre details that are ''true'', discovered because its authors [[Shown Their Work|did an amazing amount of research]]. For instance, Benjamin Franklin is carried into Congress in a sedan chair, but it's not because he's [[Too Important to Walk]] -- it's because his gout is acting up and he ''can't'' walk (and the servants carrying him were prisoners from the local jail). Sometimes the details were so hard to believe, the writers had to ignore or change them [[Reality Is Unrealistic|because they were afraid the audience would think they had made it up.]] The most significant example of this would be a line taken from something [[John Adams]] wrote in one of his letters -- that if the Founding Fathers did not ban slavery, "there will be trouble a hundred years hence." The writers had to modify the line because if they quoted it word-for-word no one would believe they hadn't put those words in Adams' mouth with the clarity of a century of hindsight.

** As admitted in the [[DVD Commentary]], Martha Jefferson never visited her husband in Philadelphia.

** There was no vote mandating that a motion for independence had to be unanimous ... but, as Hancock acknowledges in the play, there was an understanding that acting on anything less than unanimity risked a fatal split in the colonies.

* [[Batman Gambit]]: Franklin asking John Hancock to poll the Pennsylvania delegation.

* [[Big Damn Heroes]]: The arrival of Reverend John Witherspoon (and the rest of the New Jersey delegation) in Congress before the resolution on independence is struck down.

** Caesar Rodney riding eighty miles in failing health to show up just in time for the vote (a real event, famous enough that it's on the Delaware quarter).

* [[Big "Never!"]]: Adams does a few of these.

* [[Blood on the Debate Floor]]: Adams and Dickinson calmly talking out their differences. With [[Cane Fu|canes]].

* [[Bowdlerise]]: Up until recently, the only version of the movie to reach TV was a severely-edited copy that obscured or completely removed many of the raunchier bits, including the whole "New Brunswick" sequence and the latter half of Franklin's "it's like calling an ox a bull" exchange with Dickinson. Even the version that hit the theatres was badly chopped, among other things excluding lines that made it clear Rutledge's opposition to the slavery clause was not due to mindless evil, but because he saw it as a betrayal of a promise that the independence faction would allow states to govern themselves as they saw fit.

* [[Catch Phrase]]

** Adams: "Oh good ''God''" and "''In''credible."

** Lewis Morris: New York abstains... courteously.

* [[Chekhov's Gun]]: The absence of the delegation from New Jersey is repeatedly brought up, which keeps their arrival from being a deus ex machina.

* [[Composite Character]]: The John Adams in this musical is something of an amalgam of the real John Adams and his cousin Samuel Adams.

* [[Cool Horse]]: Lee's horse, especially during "The Lees of Old Virginia". It begins when Lee remarks "may my horses turn to glue..." -- at which point the horse nudges Lee in the chest. And it ends when Lee rides away -- because any horse capable of standing still whilst someone runs up behind him (in his ''blind spot'', no less) and leaps onto his back without bucking, rearing, or bolting automatically qualifies for the description.

* [[Darkest Hour]]: This musical does ''not'' end on the triumphant note you'd expect. The British have landed at New York, the newly formed U.S. of A. is facing the British Imperial Navy at a time when it was the biggest, best, most dominant navy in the world, over a quarter of the ''colonists'' are on the British side, and every man in that room is at risk of being hanged for treason. Nobody expected to win that war. "Darkest Hour" indeed...

* [[David Versus Goliath]]: A comical version in "But, Mr. Adams," seeing as how Ken Howard (Jefferson) stands a full eleven inches taller than William Daniels.

** [[George Washington]] doesn't actually appear, just writes [[The Eeyore|despondent dispatches]].

** [[John Adams]]

* [[Happily Married]]: John and Abigail Adams, Thomas and Martha Jefferson. Both of them, incidentally, are [[Truth in Television]]; the Adamses in particular were quite happily married for ''fifty-four years.'' Sadly, despite how much in love they were, Jefferson and his wife didn't have nearly as much time together, as Martha died tragically young. (The Martha Jefferson listed as Jefferson's First Lady is actually his daughter.)

* [[Hate Sink]]: John Dickinson, who isn't at all evil, but takes point for the anti-Independence side.

* [[Hypocritical Humor]]: "Two [useless men] are called a law firm." John Adams was a lawyer -- in particular, he was famous for defending the British soldiers after the Boston Massacre.

** Adams could have been aiming a bit of self deprecating humor at himself and/or a [[Take That]] at his lazy contemporaries, much like when he decries the congress he's a part of.

** Ben Franklin cannot sit down without doing so in a noteworthy manner.

{{quote|'''Franklin''': What are you staring at? Haven't you ever seen a great man before?}}

* [[Minor Character, Major Song]]: Ron Holgate as Richard Henry Lee, who has just one major scene and a minor one, but carries some great big wonderful slabs of roast pork while he's singing "The Lees of Old Virginia."

* [[Not So Different]]: "Molasses to Rum" has Rutledge spotlighting the North's complicity in the slave trade.

* [[Oh Crap]]

{{quote|'''Edward Rutledge''': "I was wondering if you could repeat a small passage: The one beginning [[Slavery|'He has waged Cruel War']]" *Jefferson stands up abruptly*}}

* [[Reality Is Unrealistic]]: In the [[DVD Commentary]] recorded many, many years later, the play's writer revealed that he originally intended Adams to note that if they leave in the slavery clause war would break out in about a century, in yet another example of lifting dialogue directly from the founders' writings. He used only the second half of the quote, "posterity will never forgive us," because he was afraid people would think it was him speaking in hindsight, rather than an ''actual historic observation'' by Adams.

** In something of a meta-example (and another use of Adams' own writings), Adams' comment to Franklin about history forgetting him and focusing exclusively on Franklin and Washington (and Washington's horse) is dead-on -- until well into the twentieth century, Adams' pivotal role in getting the Declaration passed and signed was almost systematically overlooked by historians besotted with the more traditionally heroic Washington and the polycompetent Franklin. The horse was an embellishment of the writers', however.

* [[Redheaded Hero]]/[[Heroes Want Redheads]]: Abigail Adams. Her insight and willingness to support her husband when he's at a loss even for words, spur him into action in the Continental Congress.

** And of course, there's also Thomas Jefferson.

{{quote|'''Adams:''' I've got better things to do than listen to you quote yourself!

'''Franklin:''' No, that was a new one!}}

* [[Smart People Know Latin]]: Edward Rutledge, although in this context it's more a marker of social class. Col. McKean mistakes it for French.

* [[The Smurfette Principle]]: Justified; these are, after all, the Founding ''Fathers''.

* [[Take That]]: To the New York Legislature. New York only ever [[Stiff Upper Lip|abstains ("Courteously!")]] when called upon to vote, because the New York Legislature had never bothered to ''give'' the New York delegation any instructions, as "they all talk very loud, and very fast, and nobody listens to anybody else, with the result that nothing ever gets done." This was just as true in 1972 as it was in 1776, and as any New Yorker will tell you, it's ''still'' true today.

** In the show's Broadway debut, this line got the biggest laugh out of all of them.

* [[Too Important to Walk]]: Subverted. Benjamin Franklin is carried in a sedan chair right to his seat in Congress -- but it's not because he's vain or thinks he's better than the other representatives, it's because his gout is acting up and he actually can't walk. A minute later he jokes [[Self-Deprecation|self-deprecatingly]] about being a "great man".

* [[Truth in Television]]: Vast amounts of dialogue and even song lyrics were lifted ''intact'' from the writings of the various Founding Fathers. In particular, "obnoxious and disliked" was ''John Adams' own description'' many decades after the fact of how he felt he was viewed by the Founders and the nation in general (although many historians feel he was an [[Unreliable Narrator]] in this respect), and his duets and discussions with the mental image of his wife Abigail are composed of passages from their letters to each other -- including the "Saltpeter!"/"Pins!" [[Running Gag]].