The Light Fantasticks

Tonight, I was back at the Colorado Shakespeare Festival in Boulder, this time to see one of two productions my friend is stage managing this season. This one actually isn't work by Shakespeare, but is quite famous in its own way: The Fantasticks. This musical holds the distinction of being the longest running piece of theater in American history, and the longest-running musical anywhere in the world; it first appeared off-Broadway in 1960, and closed 42 years later, after over 17,000 performances. By comparison, the currently longest running musical on Broadway, The Phantom of the Opera, (which I believe was running when I visited New York for the first time back in junior high!) is only right around half that number.

Why perform it at a Shakespeare Festival? Well, for one, it's stuffed to bursting with references to Shakespeare. There's a traveling player very much in the style of the Player from Hamlet. The character quotes (and mis-quotes) lines from several of Shakespeare's plays. And the plot is an adaptation of a play, Les Romanesques, that is itself a bit of a parody of Romeo and Juliet. In a nutshell, two fathers who want their two children to fall in love and marry pretend to feud with one other as rivals so that their children will stubbornly pursue a love that is "forbidden."

So first, my take on the play itself. I won't sugar coat it. It's plastic, naugahyde... fake, fake, fake. The characters are shallow, their actions broad. The emotions are trite. The songs seem packaged and processed. The characters even speak right to the audience and tell you their enacting a play for your enjoyment. And the whole thing creaks like it's far older than even the half-century it is. It's a simple little confection that goes down like candy and is just as short-lived in offering any satisfaction. This out-classic-musicals any classic musical I've ever seen or heard of.

But -- and I don't say this only because a friend of mine was involved -- this was really a perfect presentation of such a show. The whole theater, walls and ceiling, was coated in odd structures of "found art," strange conglomerations of what you could imagine they just found in prop storage. Some members of the audience were seated on stage, facing back out toward the bulk of the house. A ramp was built from the back of the house to go over seats and lead right up to center stage. The instrumental accompaniment (two instruments only, as is traditional for this show) was seated right on stage too. In short, this production approached the material in such a way that embraced the theatricality of the musical and forced it right into your face. It didn't apologize for anything it was, it celebrated it.

The cast was pretty good overall. In particular, the parents of the young couple (played by Tammy Meneghini and Timothy Orr) were excellent, great singers who had a great rapport on stage with each other. (Note that, as is common in repertory company theater, one of these parents was a male role re-cast as a female, which worked just fine here.) The cast had to work extra-hard to perform a musical essentially in the round, but did well with it.

As for my friend's work on it? Well, to the outside world, stage managing is an unsung role. The director and cast can't get by without a good one. And when a show has a good one, nothing goes wrong -- not that the audience ever notices, anyway. So in running what seemed to be an effortless show, hats off to my friend!

So in summary, a fine production... but of a show I probably wouldn't recommend. A theatrical equivalent of a well-made movie that you nevertheless don't care for much. But in a way, still an entertaining night at the theater.