The publicity surrounding the closing earlier this month of The Fantasticks in the Off-Broadway theater where it had run for 41 years, the longest continuous engagement in American theater history, should boost attendance at the Hedgerow Theatre's current production of the musical. That would be serendipitous for the Hedgerow, which had no idea the closing would occur when it decided to stage its show, and will be even more good luck for the theatergoers it attracts.

They will see a presentation of The Fantasticks that is just about perfect. Go to this show and you will have no trouble understanding why so many over so many years went to the New York production, then returned again and again.

The cast is the best and most professional the Hedgerow has assembled in recent years, and director Agatha Carducci-Kuhn uses it to excellent effect in a production that finds and displays the musical's humanity and humor. The small, intimate show is also an ideal fit for the Hedgerow's small, intimate auditorium.

Harvey Schmidt (music) and Tom Jones (book and lyrics) crafted a romantic fable, loosely based on a 19th-century French play, about a pair of young lovers who come together, separate and reunite. It's a gentle, largely happy tale that is brightened with a good dose of humor and tinctured with a bit of not-altogether-convincing darkness. If presented properly, as this one is, a Fantasticks production should strike the balances between sweet and cloying, simplicity and simpleness, sentiment and sentimentality.

The essential character is the narrator. He not only relates and stage-manages the story but takes the role of El Gallo, a sort of Spanish adventurer (he dresses like Zorro, sans mask) whom the parents of the young folks hire to bring their children together.

To play the part, Hedgerow has brought in Brad Little, one of the most accomplished musical performers in the area. He couldn't be better. Little has performed on Broadway and last season won a Barrymore Award for his performance as Che in Bristol Riverside Theatre's production of Evita. He has the stage presence needed for this dominating role, and he sings expressively. The dashing flamboyance, knowing sophistication, and sense of humor he brings to his portrayal are just right.

Charley Carfrey and Jeffrey Coon, who have appeared in several musicals each at the Arden Theatre Company, take the roles of the girl and boy. The script calls for them to be physically attractive, sweet and innocent-appearing (The Fantasticks isn't strong on well-rounded characters), and that's what this very appealing pair is. Each has a fine voice and knows how to present a song.

Steve Hatzai and Alan Kutner, also visiting performers, manage to get some color into the bland, facilitating roles of the fathers. Hedgerow regulars C. J. Keller and Robert Toczek take on the comic roles of the old actor and his assistant, and they are as funny as they are supposed to be. Keller's delicious portrayal of the ancient, doddering, Shakespeare-spouting performer is as good as anything in this fine production.

By Sally Feldman
Courier Times
November 17, 1998

He was the archetypal "starving actor." She was struggling to launch a brand new theater company in Bucks County. And when Brad Little, the actor, and Sue Atkinson, the founder of the Bristol Riverside Theatre, met 11 years ago, there was an instant communion.
There still is.
Atkinson was so impressed with the voice of the young actor from New York who came to a casting call that she cast him in the leading role of the theater's inaugural play, "The Robber Bridegroom."  He accepted gratefully, and has worked in several other productions at the theater, including "Irma La Douce."
Today, Atkinson's once-infant company is up and running, and is the recipient of several prestigious regional awards, including the coveted Barrymore.
And Little is starring as the Phantom in the Philadelphia production of Phantom of the Opera" at the Forrest Theatre (through Dec. 12).  The hit show, the most successful stage musical of all time, has won seven Tony Awards, and tells the tale of a masked figure who lurks beneath the catacombs of the Paris Opera House nursing his love for an ingenue soprano.
Instead of staying in a hotel in Philadelphia while he plays the lead in the touring production, Little has gratefully accepted Atkinson's invitation to stay at her sprawling, riverfront home in Bristol Township.
"It's an oasis, a wonderful retreat from the demands and tensions of this role, " said Little on a recent  morning as he enjoyed a pancake breakfast at his favorite Bristol haunt, Katy's Restaurant.  "I love being in Bristol, and Sue is a marvelous hostess who basically just lets me hang out and unwind."
Part of that unwinding, according to Little, is walking the banks of the Delaware and resting his voice. "It's one of the joys of being in this town, " he said.  "Here, I find peace."
Atkinson is just as delighted to have Little as  her house guest.  "He actually putters, and fixes things," beamed Atkinson.  "Recently, I found him fixing something in my laundry room that had been broken forever.  He's the perfect guest."
The two share another uncommon link.  It was during the run of Robber Bridegroom" that Brad Little met a young actress named Barbara McCulloh, who ultimately became his wife.
"I saw it coming," said Atkinson.  "There was just a certain chemistry there that clicked both on-and-off stage."  Atkinson's deep regret is that for complicated reasons, she could not be present at the couple's wedding over Labor Day Weekend in 1992, at sunset in the beach in Cape May, N.J.
These days, Little and his wife are living the the typical long-distance existence of two successful actors: She is in "Peter Pan" on Broadway and he is touring with "Phantom."
"It's part of the package for people like us, " said Little, who accepts the perils and celebrates the pleasure of his calling, also no equivocating. "Sue and I share something very precious," said Brad Little.  "In this business, you become like family to one another, and in Sue's case, that's the way it is. We're there for one another; and we always will be."
"What can you say about a guy who's willing to fix your front door, never get a home cooked meal , and put up with your crazy schedule?" smiled Atkinson.  "I'll take the Phantom as a houseguest any time!"

Thanks to Eileen Luscombe for sharing this interesting article.
 
 

The music box that is a recurring motif in The Phantom of the Opera could also serve as a metaphor for the way the musical is presented. The touring production of the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical at the Forrest might impress the theatergoer -- at least it did this one on a fourth viewing -- as a meticulously constructed, finely tuned entertainment machine.
This comparison is not meant to disparage the show. Blending this mixture of bold theatrical effect, potent music and grand-style melodrama into a smooth-running, impressive stage show night after night is such a dicey business that a built-in mechanical certainty seems necessary to ensure the quality of the presentation.
The Phantom of the Opera is about the only show I can think of I would recommend seeing just to experience the physical production for which it is rightly renowned. And I don't mean just the famous falling chandelier (which doesn't always fall the way it should, but more about that later). I mean Harold Prince's whole production, with its evocative sets, colorful costumes, moody lighting, imaginative use of all parts of the stage, and, best of all, set changes that are so incredibly fast and fluid they are sometimes as impossible to follow as a good magician's sleight of hand.

Lloyd Webber's music in this story of twisted, obsessive love in the 19th-century Paris Opera House is a clever mixture of pseudo-operatic and Broadway-musical style. Its grand sweep matches that of Prince's production (or is it vice versa?). The principal songs, "Music of the Night" and "All I Ask of You," are soaring, pertinent melodies. Each is inherently insidious, and Lloyd Webber, knowing a good thing when he sees it, repeats them again and again. Don't be surprised if one, or both, is still running through your head two -- in my case, three -- days later.

The Phantom machine runs quickly. There is little time to ponder what is going on amid the flow of highly amplified music and busy staging. It's a state of affairs that so benefits the musical's sketchy plot, it's difficult not to believe that the wow-'em-move-it-along approach wasn't designed in part to gloss over the deficiencies in the story.

So don't bother to wonder about such niceties as how the Phantom, the disfigured, half-masked fellow hiding out in the opera house, got the way he is; or why only half his face is disfigured (except that it makes it easier to sing); or why he is so intent on making the ingenue Christine Daae a great singer that for half the show he seems more a frustrated teacher than the tragic lover he is supposed to be.

The Phantom machine also demands that the parts be interchangeable, which means that the undeveloped characters look and act pretty much alike from production to production. I must say, though, that in this production, the show's third visit to Philadelphia, Brad Little's Phantom sings more lyrically and sweetly than any I've heard. He also overcomes the formidable obstacles of stilted, declarative scriptwriting, the half-mask, and, later in the show, garish makeup to convey at least some sense of a suffering person beneath his character's fabricated visage.

As Christine Daae, Amy Jo Arrington, in her first professional role, sings superbly but, lacking expressiveness as an actress, she is unable to generate any sense of emotional connection between her and the Phantom or her and her lover, Raoul, a role to which Jason Pebworth also brings a fine voice but little personality.

Two major first-act glitches at Friday night's opening performance demonstrated that the Phantom machine doesn't always run perfectly. The first occurred in the big scene where the Phantom is taking Christine to his lair in the bowels of the opera house and poles his way across a candle-lighted lake. Due to an insufficiency of stage smoke, the wheels of the "boat" were clearly visible as it rolled around the stage.

More seriously, instead of swooping to a crash on the stage, the chandelier the Phantom cuts loose as the first-act finale came to a halt above the audience. It remained there, swinging to and fro, when the house lights came up and revealed an obviously concerned stagehand standing on the stage apron trying to figure out what went wrong.

With the start of Act 2, however, the machine was up and humming, carrying the musical and the audience along with such energy and in such grand style that by the time the standard standing ovation -- also built into the machine? -- arose, that half-fallen chandelier didn't matter at all.