The Fantasticks
November 20, 2009 – January 10, 2010
Tuesday - Wednesday and Sun at 7:30 pm
Thursday - Saturday at 8 pm
Saturday - Sunday at 2 pm
December 2, 9, 10 and 22.at noon
Reviewed November
28 by
David Siegel |
A Potomac
Stages Pick for a winning update of an evergreen little musical
Performed at the Lincoln Theatre
Running time 2:10 – one intermission
Tickets $25-$74 |
Click here to buy the CD
 |
Let down your guard; this is a little musical indulgence for aging children.
For a few hours put aside the holiday season’s sparkling decorations,
flickering candle glow and mesmerizing crackling fires and make a stopover
to take in this polished, richly conceived The Fantastics. With
artistically fresh creative touches adding complexities and a very likeable
cast, this venerable little musical about youthful love and pain stands-out.
From its framing device visualized as an abandoned amusement park, to its
retro look variety show illusions and its non-traditional casting there is
much that Director Amanda Dehnert has accomplished to woo you. Her creative
choices bring a burnished blush to the dialogue and the lyrics along with
deeper shadows no longer obscured. Even that well worn line “without a hurt,
the heart is hollow” has a deeper resonance with a more piercing affect; not
just a cute preachy line. With her casting choices, each with fine voices
befitting the characters, Dehnert brings forth not just the obligatory
well-scrubbed innocent young lovers, but places them within a blend of cross
race families. The roguish, self-assured, handsome and
necessarily swaggering Sebastian La Cause as El Gallo, Addi McDaniel as
Luisa, the appealing, blooming, lovesick ingénue, and Timothy Ware as Matt, the
youthful geek who must make a journey to find his own pulse of confidence
are each first rate. This is an
embraceable evening with the standard
"Try to Remember" attractively sung. |
|
Storyline:
Two fathers want their son and daughter to wed, but believe
they wouldn't agree to an arranged marriage. They build a wall between their
gardens and pretend to feud so that their children will fall in love and
marry believing it to be against their parents' wishes. To move things along a bit,
they hire a troupe of players to stage an abduction of the girl so the boy
can come to her rescue.
What more can one say about the team of Jones and Schmidt that brought
forth the longest running musical in American theater history and one of
the most frequently produced musicals? Opening on the cusp of the 1960’s at
a small theater in Greenwich Village, the show did not receive the favor of
the critics, but on the wings of Jerry Orbach’s rendition of Try to
Remember caught the zeitgeist. (Let us add just one tidbit; a recording
of Orhbach’s Try to Remember was one of the a number of classic show
tunes given as a gift to the Queen of England by President Obama and the
First Lady during the Queen’s recent visit to America.) What director Amanda Dehnert has accomplished with a lively theatrical imagination is to give
some needed elixirs to this well-worn work so that it is not merely a
Holiday slot filling affair. Her artistic team including
award-winning set designer Eugene Lee, the man behind the Saturday Night
Live sets these many decades and the design for Wicked. Lee has crafted a
fully packed set design with a visual wornness as the young lovers are now a
mature couple looking back into the gauzy memory of their lives, reminiscing
in a dream that they share. Even the nooks of unused space are stuffed with
appropriate objects and large props that are wheeled in for use. Musical
Director George Fulginit-Shakar drives the production with a surprisingly
full sound that echoes nicely around the meticulously restored Lincoln
Theater. His up-tempo four-piece band has a modern sound and a percussive
nature with the ability to spark convincingly into a variety of musical genres including
jazz and blues. Don’t worry; they do soft intimacy,
unctuous folk-twinged chords and harp glissandos as well.
The cast vocalizations; whether singly, duets or in four-part harmonies,
are all an audience could wish for; delivered with feelings, not robotically.
Michael Stone Forrest and Jerome Lucas Harmann don’t steal the spotlight
from one another, giving the two fathers a caring, hale-fellows, smiling
ruddiness characterization. Nate Dendy (the Mute) delivers a graceful
presence especially when elegantly moving his wrists with a hand fan to
propel the most delicate of illusions. Laurence O’Dwyer milks his character,
the old and incorrigible iterant actor. He plays as if a crusty vaudeville
Burt Lahr doppelganger spewing forth smidgens of Shakespeare, doing slow motion pratfalls and begging the audience for every bit of
affection he can get. Jesse Terrill is the ever present understated
second-banana mischief-maker to O’Dwyer.
Ample confetti floats in on fluttering wings in a multitude of colors
from sangria to saffron with shades of pinks to peach hanging in the air
propelled by the just-so moves of a hand fan. Choreography by Sharon Jenkins
is rendered without head-scratching movements, but expressive synchronized
routines including a happy soft-shoe routine and a deliberate short tango.
The costumes have a retro look for McDaniel dressed in a white polka-dotted,
mauve dress with full poufy skirt. Ware has a preppy look while the fathers
wear earth and autumn tones of cords and nubby textures. Act I and Act II
are both lit befitting the differences between the first's essence under a
shimmering moon and the second's fighting off the ever present blast of revealing
sunlight. The band’s piano, harp, percussion and bass are perched at
audience left, becoming part of the overall design.
Music by Harvey Schmidt. Book and lyrics by Tom Jones. Directed by Amanda
Dehnert. Choreographed by Sharon Jenkins. Music direction by George
Fulginiti-Shakar. Fight direction by Craig Handel. Design: Eugene Lee (set)
Jessica Ford (costumes) Nancy Schertler (lights) Timothy J. Thompson (sound)
Jim Steinmeyer (illusion assistant) Scott Suchman (photography) Martha
Knight (stage manager). Cast: Nate Dendy, Michael Stone Forrest, Sebastian
La Cause, Jerome Lucas Harmann, Addi McDaniel, Laurence O’Dwyer, Jesse
Terrill, Timothy Ware. |
