Gil Hates Everything

1975 is about the back end of what I consider acceptable for the age of a musical these days (it used to be 1970) – so it’s lucky that 1975’s “Shenandoah” (music by Gary Geld, lyrics by Peter Udell, book by them and James Lee Barrett who wrote the screenplay for the James Stewart movie of the same name) turns out to justify its existence through its quality.

Plot: in the American Civil War, a pacifist widower farmer tries to avoid the war because it has nothing to do with him, but he’s dragged into it when his son is captured. Family tragedy and happiness ensues. It was a reasonable hit at the time, running over a thousand performances, and won a couple of Tonys, and it’s been revived several times, most recently in 2006 with Scott Bakula, to critical and popular acclaim.

I was listening to the opening number and thinking “Oh dear, is this what the ‘Parade’ soundtrack would have sounded if it had been composed in 1975?” – and I wasn’t being particularly complimentary – but then I concluded I was being a bit harsh… it wouldn’t at all surprise me if “The Old Red Hills Of Home” was spiritually inspired by this show’s “Raise The Flag Of Dixie”. And then there’s a run of entirely acceptable songs mixed in with a couple of dutiful/sentimental we’d-better-have-another-song numbers: “I’ve Heard It All Before” is a successfully bitter and memorable anti-war rant, and “Why Am I Me?”, “Next To Lovin’ (I Like Fightin’)”, “The Pickers Are Comin’”, “Meditation”, and “We Make A Beautiful Pair” are all good or better. There are a couple of iffy 70s arrangements (I’m looking at the instrumental for “It’s A Boy”) and the second act’s songs mostly don’t have the overall strength of the first’s (e.g. “The Only Home I Know” starts well but doesn’t stick the landing) – although there’s a “Meditation II” which is good.

Generally, I liked the lyrics; this is clearly a well-meaning show, and it sounds like a case of strong source material not being wilfully fucked up, which is always a relief. (You might think that strong source material would overcome most people’s attempts to screw it up, but if so, you clearly need to hear more Frank Wildhorn musicals…)

So overall this was pretty good, and I can entirely tolerate its existence. I don’t know that I’d want to go and see it, because it sounds like it’d be sad, and I don’t really need to see another anti-war show (I note that its revivals have usually been in the wake of America invading somewhere) – but if you need to see one, this sounds like it’d be a fair choice.

Random Panda awards “Shenandoah” seven out of ten pieces of bamboo.

(originally posted 2009)