#114: Shenandoah

• Performances: 1,050
• Open / Close: January 7, 1975 – August 7, 1977
• Tony Awards: Two wins out of 6 nominations, one for John Cullum for Best Actor in a Musical and the second for Best Book.
• Fun Fact: The show opened and played 4 months at the Mark Hellinger Theatre, famous for hosting #22: “My Fair Lady” from 1956 to 1962. It then moved to the Alvin for the bulk of its run. The Alvin is now the Neil Simon Theatre and the Mark Hellinger is now the Times Square Church.

Podcast

Veteran director, designer, playwright and magician Tom Width starred in two different productions of “Shenandoah” and lends his insight and expertise to a conversation about why the show was so popular then and maybe not so popular now.

My introduction to John Cullum was via the TV show, Northern Exposure. He played a charming, down-to-earth innkeeper and scored a couple Emmy nominations. The show’s producers — and most anyone who wasn’t a theater nerd — didn’t know about his celebrated Broadway career and multiple Tony Awards.

Which is crazy when you hear his amazing voice and even crazier when you read his resume. Someone who started out sword fighting against Richard Burton’s “Hamlet” deserves a bit more acclaim. But then, show business is like that.

“Shenandoah” was a great vehicle for Cullum, much in the same way that the 1965 movie was perfect for Jimmy Stewart. The protagonist — irascible, stubborn and principled Charlie Anderson — works a 500 acre, mid-19th century farm in the Shenandoah valley with the help of his 6 sons and 1 plucky daughter. Conveniently for this story, he doesn’t employ any slaves.

In the best libertarian Virginia tradition, he refuses to get involved in the Civil War even as events impede on his idyllic life. Tragedy draws him in and ultimately spits him out the other side, a changed and humble man. Though I didn’t see his performance, I can imagine the actor I saw in Northern Exposure working the story’s fight-the-power dynamics in a low-key but winning way.

In the movie, Stewart draws on all of his hearty charm in creating the cigar-chewing, blunt-speaking Charlie with wonderful results. Based on the cast album, Cullum captures some of that same charm but, in the way musicals sometimes do, the bombast of some of the songs ironically diminish his character. It can be hard to maintain a down-to-earth demeanor when you’re belting out those song-ending crescendos.

One of the worst examples is in the song “The Pickers Are Coming,” In the movie, Stewart’s tossed-off reference to suitors for his one daughter being like pickers coming to harvest is a sly joke he shares with his son. Devoting a maudlin, overlong tome to it overstates Charlie’s level of angst and flattens out the playful push-pull of his involvement in the relationship.

• Listen! You can hear the original Broadway cast recordings on YouTube.

There are other too-theatrical numbers — “Why Am I Me?” for instance or the plodding “Violets and Silverbells.” Cullum does better in “I’ve Heard it All Before,” where he obstinately proclaims that “my sons bleed but not for Virginia” and particularly in the final “Meditation II.” In a “Les Mis”-like review of the show’s key plot points, Cullum delivers a bracing soliloquy over his wife’s grave, pouring out his pain and anger in soaring melody.

• Fun Fact: Playwright Craig Lucas started his Broadway career as a bit player in the original production. He played a Confederate sniper that accidentally kills one of Charlie’s sons. Lucas would go on to write the books for “Light in the Piazza” and “An American in Paris,” winning a Pulitzer Prize for “Prelude to a Kiss.”

Of course, if anyone knows any song from the show, it’s “Freedom,” the peppy and fun anthem of democracy. I’ve heard it done a dozen times, usually better than the overly chipper cast album version. I like the simple “We Make a Beautiful Pair” better and I like the jaunty “Next to Lovin’ (I Like Fightin’)” the best. But even these highlights barely balance out the more overwrought bits, perhaps why the New York Times’s Clive Barnes essentially dismissed the original as “a little serious and a trifle old‐fashioned.”

The movie came out just as the Vietnam war was heating up and Saigon fell only months after the musical hit Broadway 10 years later. The story is shot through with ambivalence toward conflict when it’s not downright peace-loving in its depiction of the futility of war. 

• Not-so-fun Facts: The movie “Shenandoah” opened in 1965 three months after the first US combat troops landed in Vietnam. The musical opened in 1975 two months before the Fall of Saigon.

With its focus on Virginia, “Shenandoah” was very popular in the Commonwealth and touring and regional productions did well. The show attracted fans because of its embrace of the simple life and aversion to federal meddling in local affairs. But only 15 years later, the New York Times explained that, “[w]hen ”Shenandoah” opened on Broadway…it had a historical resonance; in the new production, that resonance is lost.”

• Fun Fact: The 1989 revival of “Shenandoah” opened at the appropriately-named Virginia Theatre. Not so fun: even with Cullum once again in the starring role, it would run only 32 performances.

By the time our old buddy Jeff Calhoun revived the show in 2006, there was more intense scrutiny of the stodginess of the show, one reviewer saying “[p]art of Shenandoah‘s problem is that [it] feels derivative.” The show still provides a hearty banquet of pathos for a lead actor to dig into, but it seems like even the perky charms of songs like “Freedom” wouldn’t be enough to hold an audience in the show’s thrall today.

• Final Grade: B-.

PS: It’s worth watching this next video for the sheer theatricality Cullum brings to his performance. I hope they cleaned that stage before he came out!