Review: THE FANTASTICKS at CV Rep

“Without a hurt, the heart is hollow” is a strange concept for a comedy, but these words are the anchor of a musical that’s set up would be 100% screwball comedy were it not for the deleterious effects of that hurt in the second act of The Fantasticks A Love Story Reimagined now playing at CVRep. (The reimagined part is same sex lovers.) 

The Story

Note: The fourth wall is broken often as El Gallo (pronounced El Guy-oh) tells us who the players are, where we are in the play, i.e. intermission, or to explain things - in stage direction: an aside to the audience. And now the stage is set and we begin:

A young man of 20, Matt (Eric Phelps), and a boy of 16, Lewis (Jack Mastriannni) - both limited in their worldly knowledge having never strayed from home - are falling in love over the top of a wall constructed by their feuding (in the reimagined version) mothers Bessie Mae (Lisa Vroman), and Mildred (Sadé Ayodele). It’s all very Romeo and Juliet with a gender twist in both generations.

And it stays twisty with one of the silliest turns of events, we learn that the feud and the wall were contrivances by the mothers to bring their children together. Now that they have achieved that goal, they need to “tear down that wall (Mr. Gorbachev!)” but keep their original ruse in the dark. They explain their reverse psychology in the very funny Never Say No.

El Gallo (Eric Kunze) is part Puck, part Prospero and the "magician" the parents hire to stage a fake abduction of Lewis. This will be pulled off with the help of two wackadoodle, hired players, Henry/Old Actor (Wayne Bryan) and Mortimer/The Man Who Dies (Erik Scott Romney) who will attempt to abscond with Lewis in front of Matt, thus casting Matt as an unwitting hero, and the moms will be so “grateful” they can end their fake feud. The ruse works, and at the end of act one it’s a happy tableau of the two families joined by their friendship and the love of their children.

Falling in love is easy, staying in love is hard - if act two had a motto, that would be it. Life quickly becomes mundane and squabble-y, and once the ruse is accidentally outed, the lovers break up, the mothers’ feud becomes real, they rebuild the wall, and 20-year old Matt sets off to see the world. 

What Matt endures via tableau on his journey might hit audience-goers hard. In the original version, one could laugh at over-the-top comedic staging of “life lessons” that include being pressed into a bed of nails (which I recall being a laugher in Looney Tunes cartoon torture), but in this version the dangers young people who don't fit into the world's perceived "norm" are no joke. 

Back home, 16-year old Lewis is looking at the world through “rose-colored glasses” literally, falling hard for the mysterious and swarthy El Gallo. They make plans to run away but El Gallo is here to give Lewis his own life lesson. He absconds with Lewis’s most prized possession, an heirloom necklace, along with Lewis's easily-won heart.

Matt returns home and, still in love with Lewis, defends Lewis’s honor by fighting El Gallo again. But he's no match for El Gallo’s swordsmanship and fails to avenge his “gentleman in jeopardy”. 

Both now wiser from their respective journeys, they realize they still love each other; the mothers rekindle their friendship (Plant a Radish), and all’s well that ends well. 

The Production

At 42 years, The Fantasticks is the longest running Broadway musical of all time, so none of this should be a spoiler. 

Jimmy Cuomo's set is minimalist yet clever. In the middle of the stage is another stage (a play on a play within a play), a very large metal frame shaped like a giant canopy bed without the canopy. Within the “canopy” are large travel trunks of various shapes and sizes containing all the props (Gus Sanchez) needed by the players, provided to them by The Mute (Amber Lux Archer) gliding effortlessly across the stage, always there to hand, throw or catch an object necessary to the scene. Without the space are a few basic “coffee tables” the actors occasionally stand on. One in particular was not as seaworthy as I would have liked. Phelps pulled off a pretty nifty balancing act when the “table” tried to lose him during a musical number. It’s my only “note.”

Craig Wells staging is multi-layered using previously-mentioned tables to fill the height, and the five main players themselves creating depth throughout the two hour show, all enhanced by Moira Wilkie Whitaker’s lighting design. 

Emma Bibo’s costumes were playful and fitting for the fairy tale. Coupled with Lynda Shaeps hair and makeup design, they provided another well-appreciated belly laugh with Bryan’s character dressed in Shakespearean drag with a highly-powdered face, rosy red cheeks, and cupid-bow lips. 
 

Joshua Adam’s sound design was impeccable, as was Chip Prince’s musical direction. Prince (piano), and Christian Chalifour (harp) we’re the entire orchestra and did a smashing job of it.

My favored numbers were from Vroman and Ayodele (songs noted previously) who, just like our hapless day players, owned the stage during their time on it. 

As the young lovers, Mastrianni and Phelps are fun. Sixteen year old Lewis as played by Mastrianni is an old-school, adolescent, fairy-tale princess, the ones in love with love and their own belief in how special they are in the world. Phelps portrays the 20 year old Matt more grounded and masculine (hilariously stating that Lewis makes him feel young again). Both have lovely voices, and play their youthful ages well. 

As El Gallo, Kunze is as charming as they come, leading us by the nose through the farcical premise with a wink and a smile, and stepping in to play the equally-as-charming villain (the most successful villains are) to teach them all a hard-learned life lesson.

Bryan's Old Man had us giggling like grade school kids who just heard the teacher fart, and Romney's Mortimer gave us death scenes that could give Bugs Bunny a run for his money    

The crowd was incredibly responsive. They laughed out loud, so did I. I will also tell you that three ladies left singing songs I will never recall. It’s funny, when I ask my “theatah friends” if they have ever seen The Fantasticks the answer is no, followed by Isn’t Try to Remember from that show? And yes, it is. But they know no other songs, nor the plot which confounds me a bit. It had a 42 year run - just who was going?

For this production everyone is going- they just added more shows due to demand. I will say that the music is a bit more on the operatic end of the spectrum which is not my cuppa, but don’t use that as your barometer. It's a damn fine production, well worth seeing.

Photography courtesy of David A. Lee

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