The Majestic Theater

presents

THE FANTASTICKS

by Tom Jones & Harvey Schmidt

April 15 - May 23, 2010

HELD OVER UNTIL MAY 30!

For Show Dates and Times

www.majestictheater.com/datestimes.html

Reviewed by Donna Bailey-Thompson

The Fantasticks has the distinction of being the world's longest running musical.

The Fantasticks disarms. Adult sophistication is challenged and vanquished. The story, its presentation, are deceptively simple. Remember the spontaneity of neighborhood kids creating a show mid-summer, to stage in someone’s garage? The Fantasticks radiates a similar innocence. But it’s lineage is poetic royalty – Rostand, the French poet and dramatist most famous for Cyrano de Bergerac, also wrote Les Romanesques upon which The Fantasticks is loosely based – along with inspiration from Shakespeare and Donizetti.

The original production opened in New York City in 1960 and didn’t close until 2002 – two generations! Then four years later it was revived and is still playing. It has charmed audiences throughout the USA and around the world. In June, a revival opens in London.

And right now at the Majestic, enthusiastic audiences are smiling, chuckling, laughing, and at times roaring.

The story is about two fathers devising a way to make sure their children fall in love: they will keep them separated. Because, as everyone knows, if you don’t want a child to do something, you tell them not to do it.

The cast looks exactly the way their characters should look. Luisa, the young (16) starry-eyed girl (Emily Reed) and Matt (20) the smitten swain (P. J. Adzima) stop just shy of becoming caricatures: they are that endearing. Playing their fathers to conniving perfection are James Emery (Bellomy) and Mitch Giannunzio (Hucklebee). There is a Mute (Tom Knightlee) who comes in handy and never breaks character. Holding the story together is El Gallo, the narrator (William Thomas Evans), a commanding presence with a beautifully trained voice.

And then there are the pièces de résistance – Henry, The Old Actor (John Thomas Waite) and Mortimer, The Man Who Dies (Roger Patnode). They make their entrance when the lid of a travel trunk is raised. Out step two apparitions. Henry, plump, no longer agile, costumed as a courtier, has enough schicks for a host of Henrys, all of them dead on. As a string bean Indian of a tribe that probably told him to get lost, Patnode demonstrates – again – that there isn’t a role he can’t co-opt, from the classics to a ridiculous Indian simulating his prolonged dying.

Rand Foerster’s light, explicit direction lifts the action just as it did with The Boys Next Door and A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. Set Designer Greg Trochlil augments the original set, but subtlety. The multi-colored streamers of summer and autumn that represent Fall’s colorful show are among the many touches that contribute to The Fantasticks’ distinctiveness. Brian Fournier’s choreography is as natural as if there’d been no choreography.

What is there about this play not to savor? I dunno. I couldn’t find it. It’s a universal love story with songs that are clever, sweet, and poignant, and rippling laughter that’s full of hugs.