The Fantasticks at Asheville Community Theatre
The Fantasticks is best known as the longest-running stage musical in history, having played nonstop from its 1960 Off-Broadway debut until 2002, for more than 17,000 performances. Asheville Community Theatre is adding a few more with a 60th anniversary staging of the timeless and iconic show.
It’s a classy and cosy production, with a fine cast delivering stirring renditions of the now-classic tunes “Try to Remember” and “Soon It’s Gonna Rain,” plus another dozen folksy songs that may be familiar to theater buffs and will be pleasantly new to everyone else. The comic segments — equal parts Shakespeare, commedia dell’arte, and downtown Manhattan smart-alecky-ness — are cheerfully staged and had an opening weekend audience laughing often and heartily.
The show’s setting is listed as “Anytime, anyplace,” and that’s what has kept it popular through the decades. The story is less a plot than an proto-romance: A garden wall sparks an attraction between the boy and girl it separates, Matt and Luisa, despite their apparently feuding fathers. A narrator known as El Gallo keeps the story moving (in both senses) and also keeps it somewhat at arm’s length. A happy conclusion to Act One portends lessons in worldly wisdom to come in Act Two.
Director Mark Jones, who played Matt more than 20 years ago at ACT, knows the delicacy of the slim book and stereotypical characters, and he keeps the show warm and chummy throughout, making the many addresses to the audience natural rather than arch. The entire production has a neighborly air, from Ida Bostian’s lovely earth-toned costumes — a sort of Music Man meets Calvin Klein — to Ben Harrison’s pleasing backyard-carpentry set.
The talented band, seated upstage right and led by music director Rob Blackwell, blends with the easygoing cast, which includes six “Mutes” who (as is acknowledged by the script) sing but don’t talk and serve as ensemble and Greek chorus. (Most cast members never leave the stage, as in the original show.) Kudos to Carson Fox, Mary Ann Heinen, Kaylee Lorenzen, Mia Sander, Lindsay Wheeler, and Lucas York — many of them familiar ACT faces — for putting so much soul into speechless parts. At least they get to dance now and again, in low-key but spritely choreography by Jessica Garland Lowe.
The chattiest cast member is Dillon Giles, who makes a dashing El Gallo, the narrator and rogue who’s both wise and bit wanton. He delivers his songs, including the opening “Try to Remember,” with feeling and authority, and he participates in the comic romps with gusto. His accomplices in the slapstick scenes are especially fun: Newcomer Daniel Gainey makes an impish eyepatch-wearing Mortimer, while Jack Heinen, as Henry, evokes the fallen-aristocrat air of Sir Ian McKellen doing panto on a bender (so funny!). Also entertaining are Stan Reeley and Brian Weber as the two dads, by turns scheming and petty.
Nominally the leads, Luisa and Matt are rather thankless roles, since the young lovers act more to fulfill the arc of the play’s morality tale than from character-driven motivations. But Emma-Leigh Brookshire and Alex Daly clearly understand their objectives and invest each scene with the necessary passion or petulance, even without being given credible threads to connect one moment to the next. They’re also both fine, ardent singers, which goes a long way in endearing them to the audience.
The Fantasticks was conceived to be outside of time and place, and it’s a kind of syrupy reduction of popular American theater in the 20th century. The music (by Harvey Schmidt), lyrics and book (by Tom Jones), and staging include nods to Thornton Wilder, Rodgers and Hammerstein, Candide, and other milestones, and with little to call its own. It’s remembered fondly for its longevity, a few catchy tunes, and a certain winking earnestness that others have imitated with varying levels of success. It’s a show that pretends to offer rich lessons that it seems to know at the same time are just shallow aphorisms, true but not especially illuminating.
All of which gives any production a certain safety net and a challenge: How can this bundle of attractive archetypes enchant a fresh audience? I think director Jones’ solution is the best choice: Celebrate the joy of the show moment to moment and let the characters express both its outsized aspirations and its essential simplicity with all the heart they can muster.
The Fantasticks runs on weekends through March 1. For details and tickets, visit ashevilletheatre.org.
(Photo by Studio Misha Photography, courtesy of ACT)
