Review: BRIGADOON by the Brandywiners at Longwood Gardens

Lerner and Lowe's 1947 Classic BRIGADOON may be anathema in Scotland, where keeping tartans correct is important, but most of us just want to sing along with the Gene Kelly movie version to "I'll Go Home With Bonnie Jean" or "Almost Like Being in Love". We already want Tommy and Fiona together; we already wish Jeff had a conscience.  We already know Mr. Lundie will fix everything.  We're here for music and dancing and bright swirling colors.

Josh Miller directs The Brandywiners at the next best place to the thick of a dark Scottish forest, the open air theater at Longwood Gardens, where the trees and hedges do everything a set designer could want to create a set for them. How better to stumble through the woods than along the trees?  How better to chase someone through the forest than along real thicket?  And where better to have a village fair than in the midst of an outdoor center?Having seen the musical several times, I can honestly say that Nature and a team of good gardeners and landscapers are the best set design team ever given to this show. 

Darrin Peters is a fine Tommy Albright. He's not Gene Kelly but let's be honest- no one is Gene Kelly. Get that image out of your head and picture a real person. Peters genuinely conveys falling in love fast and hard while having difficulty with self-awareness. And he's the perfect foil for this show's Fiona, the woman he falls for. She's smart, practical, has a good idea of what she's doing with her lost American, and as played by Rachel Burghen, has the best voice not only in the village but likely the county. Burghen quite frankly can play in any show she wants - this reviewer will settle for Eliza Doolittle. 

Jeff, Tommy's New Yorker companion and resident cynic, comes across as determined and gritty in Christopher James' hands, streetwise and self-absorbed.  He plays against Catherine Callahan's Meg Brockie, the self-absorbed and libidinous wench who's everyone's friend. Kudos to Callahan for doing justice to the comic turn of the show, "My Mother's Wedding Day". The song is a bit dated, its send-up no longer the funny and slightly risqué punchline it once was, but it's still shocking to the eighteenth century villagers she's with.

Andrew Cox as Charlie Dalrymple and Jack Roarty as Harry Beaton, the suitors of Fiona's sister Jean, are certainly convincing playing the successful and jilted lovers. Cox is lovestruck, Roarty desolate and prepared to let the world burn behind him.

All of which is to say, when two American tourists stumble across an unmarked rural Scottish village on the day of Jean and Charlie's wedding, they get a lot more than a friendly invitation to the reception.  And the village has to worry if it will, quite literally, continue to exist thanks to Harry's wrath. When this angry young man wants to destroy the town, he is in fact fully able to do so. 

Like OKLAHOMA! this is a heavy dance show, and like the former, the original had choreography by Agnes DeMille, which is why the movie version relied on starring Gene Kelly and Cyd Charisse. Shauna Goodman is the choreographer here, harking back to DeMille style, but clearly far less complex. Additionally this is an extremely large cast with ensemble, and while it's not the smallest stage around, it's easy to fill it with too many dancers. Goodman and Miller do quite well at balancing the number of dancers at any one time; there's no feeling of overcrowding the movement. 

If there is one false note in this production, it is in costuming. The character of Jane Ashton, a Manhattan socialite and Tommy's fiancée, is supposed to be self-absorbed, self-important, and artificial. Her costume and hair are a bit too comic, a bit too Margaret Dumont, for the part. That's the most egregious issue. Kilt lengths on a large group of men are a lesser matter for the most part and difficult to handle. 

It's as lavish a production as any at a community theater and especially so because of the location. There are a number of fine singers here, especially Burghen, and some very good dancers. It's always tricky to try even a minute of a sword dance but both Harry and two other dancers pull off some very credible moves. 

Miller and The Brandywiners should rightly be proud of this production, a lovely summer extravaganza that on the night I attended had audience members singing along. May their next production meet with the same success. 
 

 

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