Review: Trinity Rep's The Fantasticks

 A wave of nostalgia swept over me Wednesday night as I walked into Trinity Rep's Chace Theater and saw remnants of Rocky Point's midway, with the Rocky Point sign as the centerpiece of the stage.  In The Fantasticks, these pieces make a perfect stand-in to evoke Coney Island.  On Friday, we learned that the pieces would become part of Trinity's permanent props collection.  The stage is a wonderful sight and the production uses the lighting in unexpected and beautiful ways.

The Fantasticks, the much-heralded, longest running musical, is currently being revived on Broadway.  The original production closed in 2002, after an astounding 17,162 performances off-Broadway.  As the original El Gallo, Jerry Orbach's rendition of "Try to Remember" is one of the most recognizable numbers from any musical of that era.  

The story is familiar.  Boy and girl fall in love, parents meddle, life happens and a happy ending.  It is a simple, wonderful, musical theater journey.

The current Trinity production, directed by Amanda Dehnert, opens with the Mute, played by Nate Dendy and Joe Wilson, Jr. portraying El Gallo, the master of ceremonies.    Dendy and Wilson open with a series of often-performed-but-certainly-entertaining, sleight of hand, tricks.  The preamble to the show morphs into the show almost, imperceptibly.  Wilson brings an interesting hint of a pansexual edge to this staid role. Throughout the performance Dendy is a study in fatuous affability.  As reserved as Wilson is gregarious, Dendy makes a lasting impression in his Trinity debut.

The differing physicality between Stephen Berenson and Fred Sullivan make their roles as the meddling fathers all the more humorous.  As Hucklebee, Sullivan gives an engaging performance, with what I perceived as a tip of the porkpie hat, to another New York father, Archie Bunker.  Berenson gives the role of Bellomy a nervous, comic energy. There is a scene where the two fathers are plotting the matchmaking of their children while sitting on the edge of the raised platform on the stage.  Sullivan is bigger than life and Berenson's feet swing off the edge because his legs are too short to reach the ground.   It was one of many moment of humorous physicality that these, specific, actors bring to their performance.  With decades of shared history, living in close proximity and sharing secrets, the fathers, at times, seem like an old married couple.

As Henry and Mortimer, Brian McEleney and Mauro Hantman play the hired "meddlers".  Both are strong performances. McEleney gives a hysterical, appropriately over-the-top, performance.  He abandons ego as he portrays one-half of this threadbare pair of actors with no permanent address.  I am tempted to call them troubadours, but that isn't exactly the right word.  The audience reacted more strongly to his character, than to any other in the production.

The story's young lovers Matt and Luisa are played by Stephen Thorne and Rachael Warren.  Thorne plays a bemused Romeo, waiting for the girl next door.  He gives a fine performance, his rendition of "I Can See It" hits all of the right musical and emotional notes.  Warren does an admirable job as Luisa.  I am, however, surprised that Trinity bypassed the young actors in the Consortium to cast Thorne and Warren in these, age specific, roles.  During the performance, I couldn't  help wondering what a thirty-year-old actor is doing playing a petulant sixteen-year-old.  To Warren's credit she does it, and, mostly, gets away with it.   

The musicians were all top-notch.  Hearing a harp was an unexpected pleasure.  Technically, the lights were magical.  The sound was good, though a couple of times, while singing, an actor was picked up by a fellow performers mic and the sound was distorted and muddy.

This is the first time Trinity Rep has presented Tom Jones and Harvey Schmidt's The Fantasticks.  It is an amusing and entertaining production that deserves its already-extended run.

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