But I didn’t review the Dutch Apple show, which opened May 11, because a week or so earlier, I spent a day in Philadelphia with the cast, director and music director and wrote a story about it for our This Weekend section.

We laughed, we cried, we visited Independence Hall, walked around Old Town drinking up the atmosphere, and we took a trip to the Reading Terminal for lunch.

When you’ve shared a Philly cheese steak with an actor, it’s tough to be an honest critic of his work. If you like it, is it because you had such a good time together? If you hate it, can you really hurt your new friends?

So another critic wrote a review (she liked it a lot) and I went to see the show just for fun, figuring I wouldn’t write about it.

But it was so well done, so powerful, funny and moving, I’ve got to tell you about it. And I swear, it’s not the Philly cheese steak talking.

“1776” is a fun show, filled with humor, bawdiness and brilliant insight into how our country was born out of equal measures of compromise and idealism. It’s a show everyone who says they love this country should go see.

And this production, directed by Seth Reines, beautifully brings the story to life.

The best productions pay attention to details, from the costumes to the set to the casting of every role, no matter how small.

Reines and his crew, including set designer Kristian D. Perry and costume designer Nancy Missimi and an amazing cast of 24 actors, bring “1776” joyously alive.

I defy any Broadway star to do better than Kevin McDaniel in the role of Edward Rutledge, a delegate from South Carolina who defends slavery in the powerful and scary song “Molasses to Rum.”

Chuck Caruso’s Ben Franklin is a delight without being overdone. And Scott Moreau’s portrayal of John Dickinson, a delegate from Pennsylvania who opposed independence, is a strong counterpoint to the show’s hero, John Adams (Peter Riopelle) who bullies and badgers his peers into signing the Declaration.

I loved Ronald Mitchell as the rum-loving delegate from Rhode Island, and Dean Sobon’s gentle performance as a new delegate from Georgia, who finds his own strength as the issues heat up. And John Ramsey is a delightfully inflated Richard Henry Lee, delegate from Virginia.

I could go on and on because every member of this huge cast, from Jeffrey Victor, who plays Thomas Jefferson, to Timothy Reilly who plays John Hancock, is superb.

If you think “1776” is going to be a dusty old history lesson, think again.

Peter Stone, who wrote the book, and Sherman Edwards, who wrote the music and lyrics, understand that this is a great human story. The founders can be petty, egotistical and ruthless. They can be bawdy too. And they will make you laugh before they make you cry.

No, “1776” isn’t a typical musical filled with chorus girls and a song every 6!-W minutes. It’s serious at times, even educational (gasp!) but it is also funny, poignant and wonderfully entertaining.

The show runs through June 17. Give yourself an early Independence Day treat and go see it.

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Jane Holahan is a New Era staff writer. Her column appears every other Wednesday.

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