Music Theater Heritage’s The Fantasticks stick the landing with delightful whimsy

Photo by Cory Weaver

Music Theater Heritage is staging The Fantasticks right now.

The basic plot is this: there’s a girl, there’s a boy. Girl, Luisa, is full of all silliness not yet marred by life: “I like to touch my eyelids because they’re different every day.” Boy, Matt, is similar in youthful naivete and devotes poetical word to his vision of a romantic world. About Matt, “There’s this girl…”

Matt (Aidan Sarmiento) and Luisa (Daniela Rodriguez del Bosque) get the gushing I-love-yous out of the way early on. This is no love-lorn drama. A delicious stage is then set for whatever else of life is bound to happen.

With the intimate and minimal setting, the toying of senses is commandeered — the unplaceable history of the costumes alludes to no specific time period, weather references do not seem to be typical of any direct location, and make-believe creates new settings out of thin air with minimal props. A dreamlike surrealist world unfolds. We are prompted to join imagination as naturally as when we were children.

Noland, Andreas, Harris / Photo by Cory Weaver

Dads Hucklebee (Tim Noland) and Bellomy (Richard E. Harris) pitch a wall between their gardens, secretly wishing to ignite Matt and Lusia’s love with defiance of the physical barrier. Chaplin-esque Mute (Damian Blake) is the wall. He is also man and shadow, displaying fantastic physical comedy with silent reactions to the dialogue at every turn, providing counterweight to the darker moments with an ever-present sagacity.

Musicians Ty Tuttle on piano and Nisikoh on bass cue into Harvey Schmidt’s tunes with precision.“Try to Remember” depicts a warm and serene September-summer, El Gallo singing, “Try to remember and if you remember then follow…” We are beckoned into the setting of the story. In the seat next to me, the gentleman’s breathing normalizes. He’s absorbed in the music. I wonder he’s thinking. Maybe he’s remembering.

El Gallo rescinds his perch as omniscient narrator when commissioned by the fathers to stage a battle to untie the lovers and bring down the garden wall. Traveling theater players, Henry (Ron Megee) and Mortimer (Joshua Gleeson) emerge from woods in Rosencrantz-and-Guildenstern fashion to aid El Gallo’s swashbuckling staging. In long underwear with pallid faces, they depict comedic range that evokes heart-strung feeling with bubbling laughter, “There’s not much more of our company anymore: I recite Shakespeare, and Mortimer dies.” Mortimer dies, and dies again, tragically, wonderfully, beautifully, to his heart’s dramatic content. Megee uses body language as an instrument to elicit laughter, a flick of the hand enough to set the audience off. The duo was such a delight to watch. If nothing else speaks to you about a first-love-coming-of-age, these two alone are enough.

Gleeson, Sarmiento, Megee // Photo by Cory Weaver

Will love withstand life? What will Matt find in his journey to the world beyond? Will Luisa find new love in El Gallo?

Go out, join the imagination, join the whimsy: delight in life with characters who embody the best of it. You may be so entranced you’ll want to waltz right on stage.

Director Emily Shackleford brings The Fantasticks to Music Theater Heritage through February 22.