The Fantasticks

book and lyrics by Tom Jones, music by Harvey Schmidt

seen at the Jerry Orbach Theater, New York, on 29 May 2016

This musical, famously performed continuously off-Broadway for 42 years from 1960, has recently been revived, directed by the author Tom Jones with Shavey Brown as the Narrator (El Gallo), Andrew Polec as the Boy (Matt), Madison Claire Parks as the Girl (Luisa), Peter Cormican as the Boy's Father (Huckabee), Dale Hensley as the Girl's Father (Bellomy), MacIntyre Dixon as the Old Actor (Henry), Michael Nostrand as the Man who Dies (Mortimer) and Drew Seigla as the Mute.

It is a very self-conscious play, with the Narrator introducing the characters, setting the scene, and periodically commenting on the action. The characters are to some extent stereotypes - hence their personal names appear in brackets in the programme and are only casually used by the Narrator. The situation appears to be a blend of Romeo and Juliet (quarrelling families against young love) and Pyramus and Thisbe (there is a wall between the families' adjoining gardens). There are many other Shakespearean allusions in the spoken text, including a running joke that the Old Actor cannot remember the second line of Mark Antony's famous funeral oration in Julius Caesar, and some truly atrocious puns.

But it is a parody as well - the two fathers are in fact friends who have built the wall to discourage their offspring, in the hope that natural childish disobedience will lead them to fall in love and marry. Complications arise when they try to engineer Luisa's kidnapping so that Matt can heroically rescue her and thus justifiably end the 'feud' - we have reached the happy ending by the close of Act One.

Act Two takes a look at disillusionment and worldly wisdom as the two lovers in turn quarrel and go their separate ways only to find betrayal and disappointment in the wider world. They are eventually reconciled, and of course there is a sadder but wiser happy ending of a more realistic sort.

All the props come from a stage box (including the two actors Henry and Mortimer when they are required). Matt and Luisa are improbably fresh-faced and clean-cut, while the two fathers resemble nothing so much as a vaudeville double act. There is a zany and whimsical charm to all the sentimentality and pastiche-cum-parody, and an exuberant delight in the knowing allusions (unfortunately lost on most of the audience on this occasion) and the artificiality of the staging. The cast had to work quite hard to achieve the curious mixture of flatness and energy required - after all, the whole situation is an invitation to pour one's own memories of first love, its delights and its obstacles, into this rather ridiculous story, and so the characters cannot be too full of their own personality.

The musical numbers were well performed, with only a piano and harp accompaniment. What a great pleasure it was to listen to a musical without amplification; Madison Claire Parks in particular has a beautifully clear voice, but it must have been swamped when she was performing with microphones in Les Miserables. 

But why should one see this show now? Has it dated rather too much, when so many of its playful digs at Shakespeare go unrecognised? The answer is that its most famous song is Try to Remember, and I always wanted to know where that came from and how it fitted into its original context. It fits well as the framing device for the comedy, even though most of the play is too knockabout to be really nostalgic. And, in my opinion, it is the only song in the show worth remembering.