The Fantasticks
Part bedtime story, part comedy-adventure, part life lesson, The Fantasticks (book and lyrics by Tom Jones; music by Harvey Schmidt) has endured for decades on the strength of its memorable songs and sweeping musings on courtship, love, and growing up. In the current production at the Encore Musical Theatre Company, director Barton Bund works outside-in to present a musical equally concerned with story and with storytelling itself. The ensuing sweet and light production harmlessly toys with the form while still honoring the story and style that have made this show a classic.
Bund’s premise finds the players annexing a playing space intended for some other production, a notion cemented by the commedia feel of Leo Babcock’s ornate but nonspecific backdrop. A rack full of idiomatic costumes (by Sharon Larkey Urick) becomes part of the preparations and leads to a darling innovation that doubles down on the sense of using every available resource. In this pre-show state, Daniel Walker’s lighting scheme is as deliberately wrong as it is dazzlingly right once the show gets on track. It’s a framing device that informs without dictating the fable that follows, leaving room for discoveries without insisting on itself.
October 19, 2012