FFWD Weekly
Copyright © 1999. All Rights Reserved
| Theatre by Nikki Sheppy Preview If you like the genre, Theatre Calgary’s rendition of the Broadway hit musical The Fantasticks will probably hit the mark. Although it made its debut almost 40 years ago, The Fantasticks has enough modern savvy to indulge in more than a little self-mockery. The arch theatricality of musicals is the object of the play’s wisecracking songs – all of this amidst an infinitely scorn-worthy plot about star-crossed lovers Matt and Luisa and their manipulating mothers. The characters? Well, there’s El Gallo, a swashbuckling, red-caped narrator with mustachioed Spanish flair; Luisa, a teenaged princess as idealized from afar as Dante’s Beatrice; Matt, her lover, vaulting kisses over the wall that separates them; and their match-making mothers who do a funny little number about how you get your kids to do what you want by forbidding it (hence the erection of the wall which precipitates the desired effect when the kids fall in love). Then there are the players, Henry and co-hort Mortimer (an expert at dying – he’s been doing it for 40 years), and the prop-master mute whose silent dispersal of cardboard moons announces that this is all an act staged for our amusement. Scott Reid’s whimsical set confirms the impression. The flat, colourful, cartoon-like props wittily emphasize the show’s two dimensionality. In fact, if anything detracts from the enjoyment of the show (at least for this cynic), it’s the totally straight performances of typical musical staples like "Try to Remember." For such songs to be truly memorable, we’d need better singing than the simply able performances here. Besides, self-reflexive quips about how the play’s purple style needs pruning are what make this show entertaining. Sentimental declamations like "without a hurt the heart is hollow" seem to tug in an altogether different direction. It’s like having your cake and eating it too – making jolly good fun of the schlocky stock elements of musical romance, and then in all seriousness applying them. Nevertheless, keep an eye out for the show’s best performance, Tom Rooney’s irreverent turn as El Gallo. Rooney obviously has a gift for parody. At one point, while confabulating with the mothers to stage a fake abduction, he does an especially hilarious rendition of "It (The Sort of Rape) Depends on What You Pay." Andrea House is also very funny in a precious, squeaky pastiche of the lovely Luisa, and as Mortimer, Grant Linneberg dies with spasmodic genius. But if you don’t like musicals, stay away. The Fantasticks won’t convert anyone who harbours a lingering disdain for plays in which people suddenly break into song. |
| Back To This Issue Table of Contents | Back To Main Index |