Southerners on Broadway.

Contrary to some people's reminiscences, our culture in the 1970s was not all America hating post-Vietnam Watergate-obsessed conspiracy theories.  

In fact, almost 50 years ago a musical hit the Broadway boards, based on a Civil War story and starring Southerners. It was called Shenandoah.

The musical was based on a 1965 Jimmy Stewart film, and written by Peter Udell, Philip Rose, and James Lee Barrett (who wrote the movie), with music by Gary Geld. It ran for more than a thousand performances. It told the story of a family of yeoman farmers in the Shanandoah valley, a large non-slave-owning family who wanted nothing to do with the burgeoning war but were caught up in the horror of it anyway. These were the kind of people who in real life caused West Virginia to split from the eastern side and join the Union. 

Shenandoah starred John Cullum -- familiar to many people today from his appearances on Law & Order. He had been blowing the doors off the 46th Street Theater as South Carolina's John Rutledge in 1776 a few years earlier -- a role he repeated in the 1972 film version -- and played a scheming playwright in Ira Levin's Deathtrap a few years later. A very versatile actor, who would win the Tony for Shenandoah. (It did not win Best Musical; that was the year of The Wiz. The book got Best Book of a Musical, though.) It was promoted heavily on local TV, something that didn't happen only at Christmastime in those days. 

Shenandoah was typical of the Americana that was in the air leading up to the Bicentennial. People who think of seventies culture as nothing but disco and pet rocks and cheesy sitcoms might be surprised how reflective the nation was in that era, and yet celebratory. This musical entered that spirit. The story is tough -- the large family suffers at the hands of Union soldiers and Confederate deserters, a dramatic example of Trotsky's line that “You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you.” Moreover, the patriarch, Charlie, is a man whose faith in God has been wrecked before the play begins by the loss of his wife, and his is a spiritual journey as tragedy unfolds. I can't imagine a current musical even taking religion seriously enough to make it the dramatic center of the story. Audiences now would be yelling, like Job's wife, "Curse God and die!" 

And it's hard to imagine that a play about sympathetic Southerners, even those opposed to slavery and the War Between the States, would be a hit on Broadway. It would be panned as being a musical about "nice Nazis." Because people are stupid and know nothing and just want to shout. 

Shenandoah was revived in 2019, although not on Broadway. I'm not certain it could run on the Great White Way at all, not just because it takes place in the Confederacy. Broadway musicals are ridiculously expensive to produce, far more so than in 1974, and these days there has to be a built-in audience before the thing even opens or investors won't touch it. So a musical has to be constructed like a commodity around well-known pop songs (Jersey Boys, Smokey Joe's Café, MJ, Beautiful, and on and on) (and even then it can be a disaster) or be built around a movie that has a strong following (Elf, Legally Blonde, Back to the Future, all that Disney crap, and oh so much more). Foreign performance rights are also crucial to recouping investment, and a play based on a time in American history does not sound like a layup for audiences in Europe and Asia. While revivals of past hits are a good bet, Shenandoah never reached the rarified atmosphere of a few megahits like Oklahoma!, My Fair Lady, The Wiz, or Gypsy. Investors may take a flyer on something new, if it's woke enough, and take a bath on it, patting themselves on the back all the way to the tax write-off. 

As we gear up for our Semiquincentennial in 2026, I see no sign in the current culture of reflection or celebration. They revived 1776 with stunt casting -- an "All-Female, Transgender, and Non-Binary Broadway Revival," although the internal contradictions of that casting requirement will make your head spin. It makes one wonder if the John and Abigail Adams numbers are based on hot girl-on-girl action, because that's where our culture is now. Ahistorical, childish, and stupid. 

I doubt we're going to make it to the Tricentennial at this rate.