Americas greatness can be told in innumerable stories of tenacity, courage and endurance. Groups of people with like ideas, such as the Mormons, created their place in the American fabric through their determination and unity. A prime example is the historic quest of the Mormon handcart companies, made up of families who put all their belonging on two-wheeled carts and trudged from a rail line in Iowa City, Iowa, across the plains and mountains to reach their Zion in the Salt Lake Valley of Utah.We took in this summers offering of 1856! The Musical that is being performed through June 30 at the Ikeda Theater at the Mesa Arts Center, 1 E. Main St. Its an amazing and powerful production that could be staged anywhere in America to convey the human spirit and offer yet another account of a religious groups struggles to find a place to practice their faith in the face of persecution. 1856!,” with a cast of 140, is special on another level because it is wholly the creative work of Cory Ellsworth, a Mesan, who wrote the music and script, with help of professionals. It was first staged last summer at Mountain View High School in Mesa with a cast of 80. It especially resonated with members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who regard the handcart treks as part of their religious heritage. Of course, it comes on the 150th anniversary of that pioneer journey.
We saw the 2005 production, got the sound-track CD and have been playing it repeatedly for a year. So it was with great anticipation when we bought third-row tickets and watched the crisply delivered musical at Ikeda on June 28 (www.1856themusical.com). Smartly choreographed with the sweeping feeling of an epic event, 1856! comes at you with a full experience of what it must have been like to be uprooted and put through the hostile venture on a continent an ocean away. The program notes, Their story is Mormon legend and a national treasure. It is a story that has few rivals in western or American history.
Ellsworth, whose professional work has taken him far and wide, was teaching early morning seminary to teens in London in 1998 when, he said, he found time to ponder the significance of the early pioneers sacrifices and their faith and testimony. This deep respect and reverence soon resulted in his penning a few poems that led to lyrics, melodies, characters and a story line for a musical, he said.
Nearly 3,000 Mormons, many of them immigrants from England, chose to make the journey across the plains with simple handcarts because they lacked the financial means for oxen and wagons. The musical, with scenes set on the docks of England as well as along the American route, captures the deep themes of family bonds, weighing faith and doubt with perseverance and ultimate goals. The story offers a sharp contract of handcart companies that got the jump on the weather and left Iowa City in order to arrive in Salt Lake well before the winter storms in the Rockies versus one that got off late and got trapped in the storms and lost loved ones. Strikingly moving is the account of how brethren left Salt Lake in November to rescue the distressed company and get them through the last hundreds of miles.
The most moving scene came when family after family watched a child die from the bitter cold, hunger and sickness. Five bodies of girls were laid side by side on the stage while the parents evoked their grief through imagining their hopes and dreams for their children. I couldnt help but think of the musicals creator Cory Ellsworth and is wife Amy whose own son Ben died last December in Argentina in a train accident while on his Mormon mission. So much promise lost. Cory, who directs the play, turns up inconspicuously in several scenes.
The cast is superb, the lighting and staging work are exquisite — and the finale with the full, large cast epitomizes what is great and unique about theater. The quality of the show make it not surprising that the cast of 1856! The Musical heads to Salt Lake City to do five shows at the Capitol Theatre July 20-22 and 25-26 (www.arttix.org). My bet is this is a production that has legs and will be revived again and again as a piece of the American experience. Catch the show if you can. (www.mesaartscenter.com/EventDetail.aspx?).
