At one point, over a ballad tempo, Brutha Los delivered a poem-rap connecting slave ships and the middle passage to the Sept. 11 attacks and American ghetto violence; it wasn't a very good poem, and in its bludgeonlike righteousness it ended up condescending to the audience.
This is most evident in the performance of Peter Dobbins, the company's artistic director, as Evelyn, whose morally stiff spine and know-it-all righteousness are played at an overwrought high pitch that makes you wish someone would just pull his pants down.
Some Romans regard the Pope as a pilgrim from the Moral Majority who strayed by chance, into the Dolce Vita and decided to blast it with righteousness.
This gospel is the power of God for salvation to everyone who has faith "... for in it the righteousness of God is revealed through faith for faith......
"When I first saw tap dancing," she said, her blue eyes gleaming, "I immediately got it: the righteousness of being able to make so much noise with your feet!" But though dancing and music consumed her teenage energies, it was not long before holding still (i.e., modeling) would beckon.
It represents righteousness, nobility, love, so much beauty and a place of safety that people go to, and moral authority.
It knows best and its ability to coerce makes it a tool of righteousness: it can force the greedy, myopic, prejudiced, ignorant and foolish to do what's right - according to progressive doctrine.
It's unarguable that without Seeger swaddling folk music in a chunky-knit Arran sweater of activist righteousness, it would not have flourished as it did in the later 20th century; nor that the course of '60s radicalism would have effected such sweeping changes.
But because the show is a bouncier, looser project, less rigid with moral righteousness, it's more fun; for all its flaws, it's an overstuffed page-turner — if you don't like one plot, another will be along in a minute or two.
