Magical First Night at "The Fantasticks"

Carnival music greeted First Nighters as they stepped onto the “midway” for the final Cast Party of the season.

The curtain had fallen on The Fantasticks (to a standing ovation) and the onstage carnival had closed down.  Now it was re-opened on Ela’s Terrace—brighter and more colorful than ever, with red and white flags waving in the breeze, balloon centerpieces overflowing with taffy and whirly lollipops, hot dog and pop corn stands and, of course, a strolling magician.

Party-goers cheered* the cast and thanked the underwriters as they sipped cotton candy martinis and nibbled sliders, fries and mac & cheese bites provided by Anders Catering.  The jovial mood continued through the evening and into the next week as reviews appeared, echoing the audience praise:

“Astonishing!” –Los Angeles Times
“Ingenius!” –Orange County Register
“Magical!” –Huffington Post

*By the way, our Honorary Producers, Joan & Andy Fimiano and Bill & Carolyn Klein, were the first to cheer:

"Delightful, exciting or in a word...'Fantastic!'" – Joan and Andy
"Very creative, blending the SCR stage with original performance!" – Bill and Carolyn



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Movement, Magic and "The Fantasticks"

Gregory North, Addi McDaniel, Anthony Carillo and Scott Waara in The Fantasticks.

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Five Questions with Sharon Jenkins

Choreographer Sharon Jenkins has an easy smile as she talks about The Fantasticks. Jenkins has been a close collaborator with director Amanda Dehnert, including when the director drew out new insights from this beloved musical.  Recently, Jenkins talked about her memories of The Fantasticks and the approach to re-imagining the American musical theatre classic.

When did you first see The Fantasticks?
I worked on a production of it during college—it was summer stock. I loved the story and thought it was done in such a clever way: a musical that was intimate and didn’t need a large cast. Oh, and our El Gallo was the man that I would later marry.

How did this re-imagining of The Fantasticks come about?
Amanda and I have worked together for 15 years. She came to The Fantasticks with a couple of questions, as she went through every moment of the show: “How does my aesthetic work? How can I enhance the reality of these moments?”

Our company, Trinity Rep, is connected to Brown University through a Master of Fine Arts program. We learned that a student in the program also was a sleight-of-hand artist—that’s Nate Dendy [featured in SCR’s production as The Mute]. That struck a chord with Amanda and—since the character of El Gallo is described as a “magician,” and because of Amanda’s own interest in magic, and given the scenes of illusion and reality in the show— it was apparent that her concept was falling into place.

One of the first things she looked at was the song “Try to Remember.” I first heard it when I was 20 years old and I thought it was a pretty song. But as I got older, I heard the line in the song – “…Try to remember when life was so tender/That no one wept except the willow—and I would think, “What would a 20-year-old know about the kind of pain that brings a deep-welling weeping?” The first time you hear the song in the play, it asks audiences to remember back to simpler times. Then through the course of The Fantasticks, you go on a kind of life journey and at the end, like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, you realize that you had everything you needed all along. With the reprise of “Try to Remember,” it may be telling people that it doesn’t hurt to remember, and reminding them to hold onto the naïveté and magic of youth.

What about choreography in The Fantasticks?
Choreography isn’t just about laying out 20 steps of “Shuffle Off to Buffalo” (laughs). It’s a very collaborative process with the director—with Amanda. Sometimes choreography is about movement, and sometimes it is about taking away movement that may clutter the story. This is particularly true in a musical: there are those moments when just words don’t suffice. Music can help take a scene to the next moment, and so does movement. But the key is to make sure that it’s all connected to the story. 

What do you hope audiences will take away from this production?
I hope they’ll see that this is not the same production they may have seen years—even decades—ago. I hope they take away what the play’s about, that everything you think you know about love and life isn’t everything you know.

Has The Fantasticks stayed with you and your husband through the years?
(laughs) Early in my husband’s career as an actor, he was onstage and realized that he still had his wedding ring on. He quickly put it in the pocket of his costume and lost the ring. So, on his replacement ring, I had “Try to Remember” engraved on the inside. It holds special meaning for both of us. So, yes.

"The Fantasticks:" Complexity and Magic of a Musical

The set of The Fantasticks. 

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The World’s Longest-Running Musical

The original cast of The Fantasticks: Top Row (L to R): Richard Stauffer (the Mute), Jerry Orbach (El Gallo), Jay Hampton (the Handyman); Middle Row (L to R): Thomas Bruce (author Tom Jones as Henry), Rita Gardner (Luisa), Kenneth Nelson (Matt); Bottom Row (L to R): Hugh Thomas (Bellomy), George Curley (Mortimer), William Larsen (Hucklebee)

The Fantasticks opened off-Broadway at the Sullivan Street Theatre in New York on May 3, 1960. It played 17,162 performances before closing Jan. 13, 2002. It was revived just a few years later at the Snapple Theatre Center in 2006 and is still running. In fact, Addi McDaniel, who plays Luisa in our production, has performed in the revival on and off for 18 months. While the two productions share the same songs and script, she says they couldn’t be more different. This magical concept is more demanding, but McDaniel is up to the challenge. “I love that the magic is manifested in a physical way,” she says.

A host of now well-known stars have played in different productions through the years, including Jerry Orbach, F. Murray Abraham, David Canary, Ricardo Montalban, Elliott Gould, Liza Minnelli, Glenn Close, Richard Chamberlain, John Carradine and Ed Ames.

The draw of this show is illustrated not just in its record long run in New York, where it remains the only off-Broadway production to have received a Tony award, but in countless productions across the world. The Fantasticks has been produced in every state in the U.S., including a performance at the White House. Internationally, it’s been produced in 67 countries, including far flung locales like Afghanistan, New Zealand, Japan, Saudi Arabia, and Bangkok.

Putting on a musical is…complicated. Think about all of the elements that go into producing a play—actors, lights, sets, costumes, sound. Then add in music, singing, and dancing. Director Amanda Dehnert takes the process a step further: She has taken a beloved classic musical—The Fantasticks—and infused new and magical life into it.

For The Fantasticks, Dehnert took her inspiration from the mysterious stranger, El Gallo. Her approach to the musical re-imagines its setting and atmosphere as an abandoned amusement park, invoking the magical innocence of a long-past time. Inspired by the Rocky Point Park in Rhode Island—Eugene Lee’s set design includes actual pieces from that park, which closed in 1995—Dehnert explains that these common local amusement parks “represent a desire for a simpler, easier time in America.” She describes the setting as a place where people once went to escape their cares, but in its abandoned state, the park now is full of the ghosts of happiness and joy. It’s a place where “magic makes the impossible seem possible even for a moment” and a world where things do not always turn out the way we expect.

Rocky Point Park in Rhode Island

The story is straightforward: Two fathers scheme to make their children Matt and Luisa fall in love by pretending to feud and keep them apart. To seal the deal, they hire El Gallo to stage an abduction of Luisa that would allow Matt to rescue her heroically. Will the lovers lose themselves in the magic and moonlight or find their way into the sobering light of day? Will their separation provide a deeper appreciation for the love they once shared—or create a permanent gulf between them?

Addi McDaniel, Perry Ojeda and Anthony Carillo in The Fantasticks.
Photo by Debra Robinson.

What does it take to put this simple story into Dehnert’s richly layered concept? Here is a description of just five minutes in the rehearsal room recently, as the cast and team put together the pieces of the “Round and Round” musical number:

The Fantasticks creators Harvey
Schmidt and Tom Jones

In the rehearsal hall: " Choreographer Susan Jenkins briefly reminds everyone of the set up. El Gallo is showing the world to Luisa (Addi McDaniel), and Matt (Anthony Carillo) is meeting misfortune at every location. Everyone listens, and as soon as she is done the hustle of setting up the scene begins. The movement of the characters is complicated, with every actor involved, props, banners, magic boxes, and other illusions. The Mute (Nate Dendy), carefully folds a sheet that’s standing as a placeholder for a large banner. Associate director Matt Hawkins listens as the two Fathers (Gregory North and Scott Waara) pitch a modification to a costume. Stage manager Jenny Butler and assistant stage manager Jamie Tucker explain to Henry and Mortimer (Richard Doyle and Hal Landon Jr.) which banner is which and where they need to end up during the song. Dennis Castellano, the music director, plucks a few notes to help Luisa and El Gallo review a few dance steps. Stage management interns Ari and Natalie are moving steps on the mocked up platforms in the rehearsal room. Finally, the scene is set and the frenetic pace in the room stills as suddenly as it began. “Are we ready?” asks Hawkins. The room affirms. “Let’s go,” he says, and Castellano launches into the song and the room comes to life. The sprawling, complex production elements miraculously come together to simply ask if we can find happiness once we’ve seen the tragedy in the world."

The Fantasticks creators Harvey Schmidt and Tom Jones began writing together while students at the University of Texas. After partnering successfully on a few revues, they became entranced with French playwright Edmond Rostand (probably best known for his play Cyrano de Bergerac). After reading his more well-known works, they hunted down a copy from a rare book dealer in France of the first play he’d written, Les Romanesques, published in 1894, which spoofs Romeo and Juliet. The Fantasticks presents views on love, marriage and relationships that can feel sweet one moment and cynical the next—and therein lies the universal truth of this modern classic.