Review: Spokane production of ‘The Notebook’ enchants with an unlikely blend of pop, true love and Alzheimer’s awareness

In the 2004 film “The Notebook,” rich girl Allie Hamilton is wooed by a blue-collar Noah Calhoun who’s so persistent – even securing their first date by threatening to drop to his death from a Ferris wheel if she declines – that the Millennial-favorite romantic drama is comically spoofed in numerous YouTube videos as a thriller about a deranged stalker. 

Considering the movie is set in South Carolina during the 1940s, one can concede a little extreme cat-and-mouse flirtation as perhaps a cultural relic (after all, this is the same decade that gave us “Baby, It’s Cold Outside”). 

The Best of Broadway touring production of “The Notebook: The Musical,” which finished its Spokane run on Sunday, seems to be aware this dynamic wouldn’t sit as well with the audience of today as it did in 2004 – let alone the 1940s. In the musical version of the poignant tale that started its life as a Nicholas Sparks novel, the setting is shifted to an undisclosed Mid-Atlantic coastal town in the late 1960s (hopping back and forth between the present day and a reunion of the lovebirds in the late 1970s). Teenage Allie (whose surname for some reason is changed to Nelson, played by Chloë Cheers) and teenage Noah (still a Calhoun and played by Kyle Mangold) match each other’s enthusiasm upon first meeting, declaring their mutual infatuation that first night. The love story they embark on centers on choosing the right life for oneself over cultural pressures, bittersweetly juxtaposed with a meditation on the cruel frailty that can befall the human mind. 

Allie is a sheltered rich girl visiting town for the summer, with a hint of a free spirit that she suppresses at the altar of a strict regimen college prep regimen. Noah is a carefree romantic who works as a logger. When class concerns and plain old life circumstances force them apart, the two never forget each other – even upon meeting again a decade later, when a more matured Allie (Alysha Deslorieux) is engaged to the perfect man (Jesse Corbin) but still can’t help herself from visiting Noah (portrayed as a 20-something by Ken Wulf Clark) after she finds out through a newspaper article that he survived the Vietnam War. This is one area where the stage production falls a little short of the film, as Lon, Allie’s fiancé, is given few lines, though we’re told (but not shown) that he’s a dedicated public defender. In the movie, Lon is portrayed by James Marsden as a man who’s witty, hardworking and understanding in his own right, making Allie’s dilemma that much more complex. Still, stage Allie, who somehow never even thought to tell her fiancé about her passion for painting, is understandably torn between the man who gets her flowers and the man who gets her.

This love triangle doubles as the reading material – from the titular notebook – for an aged Noah (Beau Gravitte), who is desperately trying to get through to the Allie he loves as she endures the ravages of Alzheimer’s disease (Sharon Catherine Brown is sadly convincing as a woman no longer fully in control of her own mind, infusing oldest Allie with an uninhibited, almost childlike quality). Unlike the movie, the musical “Notebook” makes several mentions of younger Allie’s formidable memory (“a blessing and a curse – mostly a curse,” she quips), lending a bittersweet touch of humanity to her eventual diagnosis. 

Prolific indie-pop songstress Ingrid Michaelson wrote the music and lyrics for the theater production, using her skill as a master of both earworms and simple-yet-truthful reflections on love and the ways it affects the human mind (some of this reviewer’s favorite of her lines from “The Notebook”: “Time moves so fast when you’re with the one human who understands you,” and “Sometimes I feel like I cry without noise/Sometimes I feel like somebody chose my choice”). Like someone out for a walk to clear their head, her songs bounce between hopeful and ruminating. And if you think you don’t know her work, I can almost guarantee you’ve heard her songs in the many TV shows and movies (and even an Old Navy commercial) that benefited from her easy-listening sound. “The Notebook” isn’t necessarily marked by infectious bangers, but there are some memorable numbers, many of which employ beautiful harmonies that showcase the touring cast’s delicious blending of voices. 

And while it is indeed a touring production, the Spokane performance – in typical Spokane style – had several fun touches to keep viewers feeling the local love. A mini replica of the mansion that Noah renovates for Allie in the movie sat in the FICA lobby, impressively crafted by students from the West Valley High School Engineering and Manufacturing program. Meanwhile, the playbill featured the real-life love story of Gary and Leslie Fanning, Best of Broadway season ticketholders who met as teenagers in Soap Lake and are still happily paired 60 years later. 

The show itself also features some unexpected touches. For a production about lost love and aging, “The Notebook” has a surprising amount of comedy. As Johnny, the unfailingly idealistic physical therapist who grates on an elderly Noah, Connor Richardson brings many of these moments (“No, it’s definitely a number,” Noah deadpans after Johnny delivers the eternal cliché about age being nothing more than a number). Anne Tolpegin is also a convincing no-nonsense presence as both Allie’s mother and the world-weary nurse trying to keep elderly Allie together (and delivering a gorgeous singing voice that you almost don’t expect to come out of such tough characters).

These characters offer the perfect comic relief from the show’s heavier themes, including a moment between elderly Allie and her adult son (Jerome Harmann-Hardeman, who ironically also plays young Allie’s father) that wordlessly illustrates the disenfranchised grief of those whose family members are still living, but no longer recognizable. It’s this sort of bittersweet battle – what we were glad to have once but long to have again, what we’re happy to have now but still wish could change – that is at the heart of “The Notebook,” and the touring production delivers its complexity with a cathartic power.