THE FANTASTICKS. To 23 April.
Harrogate
THE FANTASTICKS
by Tom Jones and Harvey Schmidt
Harrogate Theatre To 23 April 2005
Tue-Sat 7.30pm Mat 16 April 2.30pm
Stagetext/Post-show discussion; 20 April
Runs 2hr 10min One interval
TICKETS: 01423 502116
www.harrogatetheatre.co.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 9 April
The Fantasticks: Fantastic, fantastic. Fantastic!Harrogate's delightful revival of this New York long-runner (a Mousetrap of the music theatre) emphasises its love story's fantasy; the origin, after all, was a play by Edmund Rostand, romantic author of Cyrano de Bergerac. And director Hannah Chissick inventively plays upon the comic/melancholic Harlequin/Columbine tradition lurking behind it.
Alongside modern elements, including the dividing garden wall neighbours build in the certainty their hostile Montague-Capulet act will bring their children together, costumes and lighting create a romantic-tinged, 18th century glow, fitting the plot's devices and escapades.
The first act ends with love triumphant. But (like Sondheim later with the composed image of a Seurat painting) the second act brings reality and discomfort into the happy picture created for the interval. Good fences make good neighbours the saying goes; this wall did the same. Now it's down, with her father over-watering his dad's flowers, and he stepping all over his neighbour's vegetable patch, tetchiness triumphs. And the lovers discover being in love isn't enough to fill life.
Bandit-Narrator El Gallo and his romantic band of ready-to-hand Indian Mortimer (Tim Steadman, with a speciality in comic dying rivalling Bottom's Pyramus) and a couple of travelling players arrive to the rescue, creating adventures that give him a rough time while she sees the world through El Gallo's rose-tinted carnival mask, making for more to life when they're reunited.
Chissick achieves a fine mix of comedy and romance. Morgan Deare and the ever-excellent Nicholas Lumley are outstanding as alternately delighted and quarrelsome old buffers, executing one of Nick Winston's dances with a foot each ensconced in watering-cans. Sophie Bould, as rose among so many thorns, has a delightful freshness, her clear soprano a fine top-line in ensemble numbers.
Philip Witcomb's serial proscenium arches points up the whole affair's conscious artifice, his lovers' moon no silver sliver but a clumpy landscaped disc, while David Holmes's delicious lighting bathes the scene in golds, rose and moonlight. It all adds up to music-theatre's love-and-age answer to Der Rosenkavalier - the final love-song It Was You' (best-known number after the framing Try to Remember') even being a Viennese waltz.
There were empty seats on the first Saturday. Yet once seen, this musical could become addictive, leading to serial sneakings back for another go. Sceptics should probably avoid. For the rest, this is a treat to remember.
Luisa: Sophie Bould
Bellomy: Morgan Deare
The Mute: Alex Durrant
Hucklebee: Nicholas Lumley
El Gallo: Alistair Robins
Henry: Stuart Sherwin
Mortimer: Tim Steadman
Matt: Dean Stobbart
Young Luisa: Elizabeth Selway/Amelia Di Virgilio
Young Matt: Alex South/Robert Everand
Director: Hannah Chissick
Designer: Philip Witcomb
Lighting: David Holmes
Sound: Maurice Stewart
Musical Director: Paul Harvard
Choreographer: Nick Winston
Fight director: Kevin McCurdy
Assistant director: Phil Lowe
2005-04-10 12:34:51