Rhett Hemingway and Sophie Pollono (Photo by Andy DePung)
Reviewed by F. Kathleen Foley
Ruskin Group Theatre
Thru Aug. 24
RECOMMENDED
You know you have a generational, almost atavistic connection to a show when you are weeping within moments of the lights going up.
The Fantasticks, the longest running musical in history, goes back so many years and has gone through so many iterations—including a critically ill-received 2000 film—that you would think material this familiar wouldn’t pack the same emotional punch of a first viewing. You would be wrong.
The current production at the Ruskin Group Theatre establishes beyond a doubt the undiminished emotional impact of this venerable show. Director Elina de Santos, a proven practitioner who has demonstrated her theatrical mettle again and again over the years, opts for sincerity and simplicity in a luminous staging that ranks among the very best of her many stage successes. Of course, the fact that she has gathered a wonderful cast and a superlative team of designers helps.
First produced off-Broadway in 1960, The Fantasticks — book and lyrics by Tom Jones, music by Harvey Schmidt — ran until 2002, after which it enjoyed another healthy run that ran from 2006 until 2017. That revival was artfully reconfigured by Jones, who rectified several of the show’s intrinsic problems, most notably the glaringly non-PC “rape song,” a bill of fare listing various abductions for hire. (“The abduction you get depends on “what you pay.”) Jones also elided gauchely “comical” Native American references, which had palled with time.
The musical’s love story, pitched in a fantastical world (hence the title) that hovers well above reality, centers around Matt (Rhett Hemingway) and Luisa (Sophie Pollono), would-be lovers who have been forbidden to fraternize by Matt’s father Hucklebee (Kiel Kennedy) and Luisa’s father Bellomy (Michael D. Cohen), who are neighbors and presumed enemies. But the dads, actually hoping their offspring will fall in love and marry, have cooked up a phony feud, complete with a Wall (Raven Scott) that separates their adjacent properties. They think that saying “no” to their kids will make them rush headlong into a “forbidden” romance and —to move things along — they hire itinerant bandit, El Gallo (Danny Bernardo), who in turn hires traveling players Heny (John Wuchte) and Mortimer (Michael Redfield), to stage Luisa’s abduction. Heroically battling the ersatz assailants, Matt rescues Luisa and romance follows—until the second act, when the deception is revealed, disappointment follows, and Matt departs for the city to be painfully schooled, a la Candide, in the harsh realities of the outer world.
The design elements — especially Bruce Goodrich’s set, Matt Richter’s lighting, and Jennifer Pollono and Elisa Green‘s imaginatively ragtag costumes — constitute eye candy of a high order, while the choreography, by Jennifer Oundjian and Erik Hall, is perfectly suited to this small playing area.
Casting director Victoria Hoffman has assembled a practically perfect cast. Scott’s sensitive rendering of the role of The Mute transforms him from a lesser character to one that’s memorable. Kennedy and Cohen nail their laughs as the farcical fathers, while Wuchte, as a washed-up thespian brandishing tattered clippings of his past glories, delivers the most side-splitting, over-the-top turn of the show. Remarkably, Redfield, a hilarious Mortimer whose histrionic “dying” paroxysms earn big rounds of applause, also functions as the show’s music director and on-stage keyboardist. He and Wuchte, who also does double duty as the percussionist in the on-stage band, dash back and forth between their musical and actorly duties in a breathless display of virtuosity, while secondary keyboardist Nisha Sujatha Arunasalam carries on with nary a hitch.
Mellow-voiced Bernardo is serviceably sexy as El Gallo, the mysterious bandit who enchants, then betrays Luisa, while agile, handsome Hemingway is the ideal embodiment of love’s young dream. However, it is Pollono, starting with her first number, ‘Much More,” who stands out among this exceptional cast. Fresh-faced and spunky, with a piercingly sweet soprano, she establishes herself as the powerhouse of the show in a performance that never falters.
Ruskin Group Theatre, 3000 Airport Ave., Santa Monica. 8 p.m. Fri.-Sat., 2 p.m. Sun., thru Aug. 23. (310) 397-3244. http://www.ruskingrouptheatre.com Running time: two hours and 20 minutes with an intermission.
