Review: HUZZAH! at Old Globe Theatre

If life were a Renaissance Faire, things would be…well, different, certainly. You might share your days and nights with sword-wielding, costumed individuals who share your love of a different time, maybe not even necessarily the Renaissance. Faires have been known to draw cos-players. So Wolf Boy, Boba Fett, come on in! Everybody is welcome.

The anything goes, freak flag flying spirit courses liberally through HUZZAH!, a new musical by Laurence O’Keefe and Nell Benjamin in its world premiere at The Old Globe Theatre, and it’s easy enough to get swept along for the ride. The visuals, the production values and a few of the songs are what make this long-in-development musical an affable enough couple of hours.

The story’s a clunker. HUZZAH! feels like its creators took their concept – admittedly, a very good idea – and threw together several disparate characters and songs, but never really figured out how to make the whole thing hang together. Anne Tippe’s mostly fam-friendly production contains one legitimate star turn by Leo Roberts and perhaps the launch of a new leading lady (about which more will be said later).

The tale of HUZZAH! involves Johnny Mirandola (Lance Arthur Smith) the owner of a long-established community Renaissance Faire, handing over the reins of the business over to his two daughters, Kate (Cailen Fu) and Gwen (Liisi LaFountaine). Kate lives the faire. She’s been a costumed, boots on the ground performer since childhood. Gwen took a different path, leaving the actual operation of the fair to keep the books along with the faire’s attorney, Gareth (Anthony Chatmon II). But Johnny has also given a lot of the business’s funds to a new player, a knight named Sir Rowland Prowd (Roberts), who is even more committed to the pure ideals of Ren Faire life than Kate. This development sends Gwen and Gareth scurrying back to the trees and the costumes to make sure everything doesn’t go to hell. Which of course it does. Lines are drawn, territory marked out among long-time faire employees, Both sisters fall for Sir Rowland which threatens to rip the family – and the grande olde faire - apart.

HUZZAH! is awash in wistfulness, what feels like a nostalgic (albeit consistently satiric) eye for the men, women and others who spend their free time hefting swords, strumming lutes and raising tankards while cavorting around forest glens. Todd Rosenthal’s delicious greenery-set scenery is a burst of color, with a maypole at the center, a stone with sword on one end, and an ATM on the other. Haydee Zelideth’s costumes – one of which figures prominently in the plot – are magnificent.  The songs – by turns rousing or sad – pay homage to the world and the life.  

The husband-and-wife duo of O’Keefe and Benjamin are known primarily for their musical adaptations of movies (among them LEGALLY BLONDE, and HEATHERS). Working with an original story here, the duo’s score for HUZZAH! is measurably superior to its book.  Tone juggling is one problem. This feels like it was envisioned largely as a comedy, but amidst a lot of salty jokes about cosplay nerds, and the ability (or lack thereof) to “score” at a Ren Faire, the writers are also hitting us with characters who are mentally ill and suffering from dementia. So the same kids who are brought up onstage in Act 1 to join the maypole dance also get to witness an act of domestic violence. An act that appears to be forgiven.

The score, a pastiche of musical styles, contains some real gems, notably the very sexy “Howl at the Moon” between Sir Roland and Gwen and the shanty-like duet, “The Stowaway.” Possessed of more magnetism than he has any right to channel, Roberts turns this seductive knight into an inferno. Here’s an actor worth tracking.

Fu and Chattmon are equally solid as Kate and Gareth, two characters with a conflicting set of problems. As is Broadway vet Kate Shindle who cruises through a star turn role as Anne Bonny, the Pirate Queen, a tough swashbuckler with a head for business … and a middle school teacher in her life outside the faire.

At the performance I saw, understudy Beth Stafford Laird (performing for LaFontaine) proved a more than capable Gwen.

HUZZAH! plays through Oct. 19 at The Old Globe Theatre in San Diego's Balboa Park.

Los Angeles Awards - Live Stats

Best Musical - Top 3

1. JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR (Hollywood Bowl)

9% of votes

2. HAIR (Conundrum Theatre)

5.2% of votes

3. HEATHERS (Backyard Playhouse: Treetop Production)

5.1% of votes

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