Hailed as the world’s longest running musical, The Fantasticks opened Off-Broadway on May 3, 1960 and closed after 17,162 performances on January 14, 2002. Despite having been a musical theater buff, I did not see one of those performances. Sure, I knew the popular songs, but “Try to Remember” was one of those hits that I associated with my parents’ generation and I certainly was not interested in an intimate boy-meets-girl love story, especially when there were other big-budget splashy New York musicals to see.
When given the opportunity to review The Fantasticks at New Haven’s Long Wharf Theater, I certainly did not know what to expect. I anticipated a quaint, quiet musical with a simple story. What I saw was an entertaining and thought-provoking show with surprisingly dark elements and a varied musical score.
The Fantasticks is based on the 1864 French play, Les Romanesques, and uses classical theater styles including those of the Greeks, Shakespeare, and Commedia dell’Arte. The narrator, El Gallo, and his assistant, The Mute, set the stage for the story of young Louisa and Matt, whose romance is spurred on by the manipulation of their conniving fathers. Using reverse psychology, Matt and Louisa’s fathers, Bellomy and Hucklebee, build a wall between their homes, forbidding Louisa and Matt to see each other.
Once they are convinced that Louisa and Matt are in love, the fathers go even further to contrive a reason for breaking down the wall, by hiring actors to abduct Louisa and allow Matt to come her rescue. This disturbing plan sounds ominous, but is actually played for laughs, with the addition of Henry, an ancient, over-the-top Shakespearean actor, and Mortimer, an actor whose specialty is dying. All goes according to plan, and by the close of Act One, the wall is down and Louisa and Matt are married.
The second half of the show delves under the sugarcoated love story, and opens with the young lovers' disillusionment. Matt learns about the fathers’ deception, and leaves Louisa to explore the world. Louisa first goes through a period of despair, and then moves on to her own exploration accompanied by her abductor, El Gallo. Both young people find despair out in the world – Matt is a victim of the world’s adversities, to which Louisa turns a blind eye thanks to the mask of illusion that El Gallo insists she wears. When the two lovers meet at the end they are both older and wiser, and realize that what they really needed was each other. Now we are set for the real happy ending.
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