Photo by Scott Black
For director Bill Koch, the Blue Slipper Theatre’s latest show has been a long time coming. Thirty years ago in Livingston, Koch’s father told him how to get his foot in the theatre door—by learning the business from the ground up—performing menial but necessary tasks like taking coats and hats, passing programs and sweeping floors at the theatre. For the starry-eyed young aspiring actor, Koch says his first show at the Slipper was something truly special as he watched the magic build daily from nuts and bolts behind the scenes. That show was the first and only musical staged at the theatre and reopens now, 30 years later: “The Fantasticks,” by Tom Jones and Harvey Schmidt.
Many audiences are familiar with the show, the longest running musical in the world to date and a fixture off Broadway for 42 years. But for the uninitiated, this show has elements of Shakespeare, Flaubert, Carl Jung, Dr. Seuss, John Waters, and a musical score to tie it all together. In a case of the whole emerging as much more than the sum of its parts, the result is a timeless classic of American theatre of which worldwide audiences never tire.
“It’s a quintessential love story,” says Koch. “It shows the dreaminess and fantasy of what we think love is when we’re young—although I don’t know if you ever lose it; we’re always capable of achieving that kind of stupidity and bliss.” The play certainly doesn’t allow the romantic ideal to prevail entirely, however. The mawkish mooning of the young lovers Matt (Micah Price) and Luisa (Jennie Lynn Stanley), eventually gives way to harsh realities each must face about their callow perceptions of love and the strength of their bond.
Although falsely feuding fathers Bellomy (Koch) and Hucklebee (Rick Nelson) conspire to unite Matt and Luisa, their efforts are no match for human nature or their children’s wanderlust. The well-intentioned parents further their scheme with a mock melodramatic kidnapping staged by worldly con artist El Gallo (John Sullivan) and his hokey henchmen, Henry the Old Actor (Gary Fish) and Mortimer “The Indian” or “The Man Who Always Dies” (Ray Ortega). El Gallo facilitates the corruption of young love’s naiveté and even dupes the young couples’ fathers, a sort of inevitable Judas, traitor to the immature love of these as-yet unseasoned lives.
The stage is primarily set by El Gallo’s narration. He asks the audience to remember their own youthful romantic yearnings, and his monologues evoke the sweet Septembers of a collective past. As the arc of the story progresses, the lighting, simple props and minimalist set design contribute to the plot only as signifiers—the story is carried on the tides of archetype, shared experience, nostalgia, and emotion.
Stark visual metaphors of props usually offered by “The Mute” (Audrey Laviolette)—a cardboard “Lover’s moon,” confetti for every kind of weather, a tree made of a dead branch and stick-on leaves—allow the audience to project its imagination onto the stage. “It’s storytelling for adults,” Koch says.
Piano accompanist Edie Linneweber underscores the emotional pacing of the play with theme music for each character, a soundtrack alongside the dialogue and body language of the play. “Every song has a meaning, a reason,” Koch says. “When they do happen, it’s a storytelling thing or an emotion-revealing characteristic.” For example, once the bloom is off the rose for the young couple, from, “This Plum is too Ripe”: “Take away the painted sunset; Take away the blue lagoon. What at night seems oh so scenic, May be cynic much too soon.”
Although Director (and father Bellomy) Koch describes the show as “campy in spots,” rife with exaggeration and overstatement, “blatant” costumes, tongue-in-cheek clichés and stereotypes, this caricature is a deliberate device of the storytelling. The deeper themes resonate through the broadly painted strokes of these elements and the comic relief, offering a post-modern moral of sorts.
“We overestimate what it is we really want…we make it bigger than it really is…we make mountains out of molehills,” Koch says. “If people could find this in real life--we’re all fallible, we all make mistakes, and our biggest fault as a people is that we don’t forgive,” Koch says.
A Love Affair With Theatre
In the March 1979 performance, local newspaper publisher John Sullivan played the main character, narrator and worldly trickster “El Gallo,” as well as directing the first staging at the Slipper. When Koch was mulling over the decision to stage the revival of “The Fantasticks,” he says he casually approached Sullivan with the idea to reprise his role as the dark thief of wide-eyed innocence. Koch says he got only a laugh from Sullivan initially, but later Sullivan appeared at auditions and won the role.
Spurred and encouraged by Sullivan’s sign-on, Koch says he began to contact other members of the original Blue Slipper cast to come to the show’s opening on Friday, September 13, 2008. Despite the passage of three decades, Koch was able to invite them all, and all were eager to join the reunion: Val Bryce (Luisa; she happened to be honeymooning in the area); Zach Woodhull (Matt), Arnold Huppert, Jr (father Bellomy).; Mike Art (Henry The Old Actor, just up the road at Chico Hot Springs), and local Dick Cain (Mortimer/The Indian) The only two who could not be physically in attendance are Barbara and Roger Case (The Mute and father Hucklebee). The couple had a prior commitment at another reunion, but told Koch they would be sending flowers for opening.
The board then agreed to make their opening a celebration of the cast of 30 years ago, as well as an opportunity to honor their sponsors and contributors over the years. “It’s a feel-good party for those who’ve contributed time and money over the years to get an acknowledgment for what they’ve done,” Koch says. The group of actors, patrons and theatre-lovers in attendance for the opening night had the added benefit of witnessing a rare reunion, one of the community-building experiences of local theatre.
This production is evidently deeply personal and nostalgic for Koch, but he makes no apologies. He intersperses the set with nods to the past—images of the past production amongst the confetti of the backdrop, and the use of the original lighting that John Sullivan bought for the first production. They are touches that no one else might notice, but part of his homage to the show and players that Koch says “changed the course of ambitions and aspirations” in his young life.
“I think we have to connect with what was; if we don’t remember what we’ve done, not just life but also theatre—you can’t look back and see the good or the bad and how to do better. Nothing ever starts where you begin. There’s always been people before us who’ve done the exact same thing.”
“The Fantasticks” runs weekends September 13 through October 4, 2008 at the Blue Slipper Theatre at 113 E. Callender St., Livingston. Call 222-7720 for reservations or show information.
—Jen Eames
editor@livingstonweekly.com
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