‘Fantasticks’ journey
A lot of musicals might be called “long-running,” but they’re all feeble in comparison with “The Fantasticks.” This romantic fable opened in New York in 1960 and piled up a total of 17,162 consecutive performances before launching into its final chorus of “Try to Remember” three years ago. It was the longest run in New York theater history.
Ha. Try to remember that, “Phantom.”
When it finally closed in 2002, there was little need to mourn. Everyone knew “The Fantasticks” would continue to be revived by theaters around the country and the world. It’s just too beloved – and too timeless, with its gentle themes of young love.
Interplayers obliges this weekend by opening “The Fantasticks” as its holiday show.
The resignation last month of artistic director Nike Imoru forced a change at the top of this production. Roger Welch, artistic head of the Coeur d’Alene Summer Theatre, took over the directing and Carol Miyamoto, a respected veteran of dozens of local productions, is handling the musical direction.
The cast features a number of familiar local names, including Troy Nickerson, Patrick Treadway, Jack Bannon and Damon Mentzer, as well as Seattle actor Christopher Bange (the latter two having just come off of a tour de force in Interplayers’ “The Mystery of Irma Vep”). Theresa Kelly will make her Interplayers debut as Luisa.
So what kind of magic does “The Fantasticks” possess to make it last so long?
Let’s see what Brooks Atkinson of The New York Times said the morning after it opened in May 1960: “Although the story is slight, the style is entrancing. It seems like a harlequinade in the setting of a masque. The characters are figures in a legend, acted with an artlessness that is winning.”
A harlequinade is an old theater form dating back at least to the 1700s, combining elements of fairy tale and romance, in which two young lovers try to outwit a father figure. A masque is an even more ancient theater form involving music, poetry and dance.
In other words, Tom Jones and Harvey Schmidt deliberately tapped into elemental aspects of ancient theater with “The Fantasticks.” These old theater rituals have been entrancing audiences for 2,500 years, so it should be no surprise that they continue do so today.
The plot is not exactly young either. They borrowed it from Rostand’s 1894 satire “Les Romanesques.”
Jones and Schmidt wrapped it all in a package so simple and innocent, you’ll probably never even notice those venerable roots. But that doesn’t mean the magic isn’t at work on your subconscious.
That said, critic Atkinson completely blew it in his review back in 1960. He was disappointed in the show overall and wrote, “Perhaps ‘The Fantasticks’ is by nature the sort of thing that loses magic the longer it endures.”
There’s a sentence he may have wanted to take back.
New York Times critic Peter Marks revisited the show 38 years later and had no problem understanding its appeal.
“(It) can not only still put up a charming front, but it appears able to renew itself,” wrote Marks. “The musical retains the power to overwhelm cynicism with lyricism, to make itself, in fact, seem eternally young.”
So “The Fantasticks” is both very young and very, very old; a winning combination.
Tonight’s preview presentation at Interplayers will be preceded by special First Friday events in the lobby from 5:30 to 7:45 p.m., including music by LUSH, appetizers, paintings by Don Botts and a silent auction to benefit Interplayers.