Giant Step Backward

By T.E.K.

SHENANDOAH

A Musical

Seeing Shenandoah is like riffling through a 30-year-old scrapbook of the U.S. musical theater. Here is a Rodgers and Hammerstein type of show, though it conspicuously lacks the abundant gifts of R & H. Here are the stomping, thigh-slapping, open-air dances styled in the mode of Agnes de Mille. Here are the strong, silent heroes who conquered the land, together with their deferential but spunky helpmeets, whose chief tasks were to bear children and get the vittles on the table. It is all sentimentally endearing, and it marks one giant step backward for the American musical.

The story, what there is of it, is lifted from a 1965 movie of the same name, which starred James Stewart. The action takes place during the Civil War. Charlie Anderson (John Cullum) is a widower who periodically communes with his dead wife in bathetic speeches directed disconcertingly at the floor boards. He is also a Virginia landowner with six sons who has no intention of letting them be drafted into the Confederate forces. He argues that war violates the will of God, which suggests that he reads his Bible selectively, ignoring such passages as Exodus 15:3, "The Lord is a man of war."

Predictably, the sword sunders Charlie's pacifist haven. His youngest son is kidnaped by the Yankees; his eldest is murdered by the Confederates under the misconception that he is a Union soldier. Family scenes bordering on the mawkish abound, culminating in a sob-happy ending. Cullum holds the rambling show together with a strong stage presence and a robust baritone, but his general manner is a trifle too Broadway-slick for a hornyhanded farmer. Producers invariably say of a musical like this that it will find its audience, and much of Shenandoah is so amiably wholesome that one wishes them luck in finding it.

qed T.E.K.

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