The Fantasticks

The Fantasticks: Well-Worn but Comforting

Schroeder Performance Hall,

Concordia University

through July 8

Running Time: 2 hrs, 10 min

The term "community theatre" has assumed an unfair, pejorative connotation. Usually it's used to deride a well-meaning theatre company staging feel-good, slightly hapless productions for an audience that attends because the material is well-worn but comforting, the actors are well-known and charming, and the entire affair has a sense of the familiar: more akin to watching home movies with one's extended family than attending a serious art event in some highfalutin performing arts center. What's wrong with that?

In the care of the Austin Playhouse, and more specifically, of Producing Artistic Director Don Toner (who directs this well-worn musical), what might be derided should be applauded. The familiarity of material, acting company, and audience at an Austin Playhouse production breeds not contempt, but something warmer, where small trips and stumbles are less noticeable, if not completely forgiven. The audience-friendly acting troupe, led by the likes of local stage stalwarts Dirk van Allen, Thomas C. Parker, and Everett Skaggs, milks the most from Tom Jones' and Harvey Schmidt's boy's-father-meets-girl's-father-with-a-twist love story. As the fathers, van Allen and Parker are cute, quaint, combative, and mostly in sync in their soft, soft-shoe routines. Phillip Ayliffe does a neat comic turn as Mortimer, sidekick to Skagg's wonderfully droll, Shakespearean (or is that Victorian?) Henry. Brian Gaston has charisma to spare as the dark but accommodating El Gallo, though his energy seemed to flag by the musical's end. As the girl, Luisa, Kelly Galvin flashes a pretty smile and offers deft moves, but the young actress' voice has some strengthening to do. The real standout in this amiable crowd is Cory Cruser as the boy, Matt; Cruser's voice and acting are equally, exceptionally strong.

Now, if the idea of home movies with family doesn't appeal, those small trips and stumbles won't be so easily overlooked. A musical, especially a chamber musical such as The Fantasticks, can go a long way on its various parts, but if the sum can't be greater than, or at least equal to, its parts, then the evening is going to drag on, despite its comfortable atmosphere. When, after the opening song, the upstage curtains snagged on something (the percussionist's equipment?), never quite masking the white wall, it was clear that the evening would be full of such little trips, mishaps, and omissions (including a much-too-real and scary moment when the Mute, Stacey Huston, nearly fell off a chair trying to attach a curtain to the wobbly set). The singing is not uniformly good or even audible; the combo is not always in rhythm; it appears that choreographer Laura Walberg gets the most out of her charges, but she's working with a rather limited palette; Mark Novick's lighting is scanty at best. The room itself seems wrong; it's just not enough of a theatre for a play that has as much to say about theatricality as it does the nature of true love.

In spite of its evident charms, there are too many things lacking to call this production better than adequate. Yet even so, one gets the feeling that Toner is completely in tune with both his appreciative audience and his crowd-pleasing troupe, serving up fare to sustain a dedicated community who love theatre, served his way.