Cinema: Cherry Bomb

1776

Directed by PETER H. HUNT

Screenplay by PETER STONE

The idea was to portray the Second Continental Congress and the beginnings of the American war of independence as occasions for song and dance. Joan Littlewood could have managed it, making a brazenly satiric three-ring vaudeville out of the babble of idealism, pomposity and compromise from which America rather tentatively emerged. Sermons are much closer to the heart of 1776 than satire, however, and the business of turning the founding fathers into a crew of periwigged chorus boys has been accomplished with all due seriousness. Like the hit Broadway show on which...

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