| When the musical Shenandoah was first produced in 1975, the spectre of the Vietnam War still loomed large over American culture. (U.S. troops had only just been withdrawn in 1973.) I imagine that's one big reason why the creatives involved chose to adapt the popular 1965 film of the same title, about an American family inevitably caught up in a war (the U.S. Civil War) they wanted no part of. I think the actual issues involved in the Civil War took a back seat to the war's effect on the family and the implicit evocation of more recent American wars, both in the show itself and in the political and popular discussion about it at the time. |
