THE FANTASTICKS
THE FANTASTICKS, Hayes Theatre Co, 11-31 January 2016. Photography Marnya Rothe: above Jonathan Hickey and Bobbie-Jean Henning; right - Laurence Coy, the kids and Garry Scale.
Loosely based on Les Romanesques (1894), a play by Edmond Rostand, The Fantasticks is a bit of musical theatre history in that it holds the record as the longest-running – 42 years and 17,000+ performances in its Off-Broadway location – and is also a crowd favourite worldwide.
According to the New York Times (and Wikipedia) it “…is one of the most widely produced musicals in the world, with more than 11,000 productions, by 2010, in 3000 cities and towns in all 50 states, as well as in 67 countries.” It’s also been translated into Mandarin and performed by the Peking Opera, and in its original form, it continues playing somewhere in the world virtually every evening.
Amazing. Why is this so? What is the appeal of the silly story (even by old tyme musical theatre standards) and the derivative yet dreary music?
In essence, young Luisa (Bobbie-Jean Henning) and slightly older Matt (Jonathan Hickey) are literally girl and boy next door. Their dads (Laurence Coy and Garry Scale) want them to fall in love. How better than to say “no”. A high wall is built between the houses and, of course, Luisa and Matt can’t wait to get over, around or under it. But the two dads are now stuck with the ongoing feud they’ve created for themselves, what to do?
Of course! Hire a freelance fixer: El Gallo (Martin Crewes) to force the kids to break up! He’s a sinister fellow, clad in black leather and ill intent, so why any parent – even a duffer of a 1950s dad – would sool him onto their daughter is another mystery. That he has also already opened the show by murdering its most famous and only halfway decent song “Try To Remember (the kind of September etc etc)” should be another reason to steer clear, but no. Handsome is as handsome does and silly Luisa flat out falls for him. It’s downright off.
And that brings us to the worst choice made in staging this antique of post-war attitudes with its hideous treatment of the young woman at its core. The choice (and it is a choice, there are permissible alternatives, this is not a Beckett situation) is to keep what most were referring to – in hushed and disbelieving tones – during the interval as “the rape song”.
Director Helen Dallimore has made some updates to the piece – electric guitars and electronic piano in place of the original harp and piano – and has also minimised or discarded the whiffiest stereotypes (a dumb actor and a “Red Indian”) but “the rape song” – actually titled “It Depends On What You Pay” is retained in all its unforgivable in-glory.
What’s worse is that El Gallo (think any number of footballers or Chris Gayle) is given the sleaziest of opportunities in the song to justify the word and his actions. The dads can purchase “the rape you’ll never forget” and depending on how much they’re willing to pay, they can choose the “Venetian rape, the Drunken rape, the Gothic rape” and – hey, humourless feminists lighten up – he’s actually talking about the traditional literary sense of the word, you know: the Rape of the Lock, the Rape of Lucrece. Yeah – silly girls, he means abduction, kidnapping. Nothing nasty like [insert double entendre here].
The nervous laughter that flitted around the audience at the end of this number – sung in jaunty and jolly style by El Gallo and the dads – was only as weird as what we had just witnessed. Later in the piece, Luisa presents her wrist to El Gallo for a kiss. Around it she has tied a sky blue ribbon to mark the bruise on her flesh made when he assaulted her – and, she says, it is quite her favourite thing. Ye gods.
There is no artistic justification for any of the above and for me at least, the effect was to all but cancel out the fine and hardworking cast: Laurence Coy and Garry Scale in particular have the best of it, wringing a bit of real wit and humour from the lame book and lyrics (Tom Jones) and music (Harvey “Homage” Schmidt).
Bobbie-Jean Henning and Jonathan Hickey do well as newcomers in what is probably a new and nerve-racking situation – working acoustically with the musicians out of their sight and behind a scrim – and are charming. The musicians too (Hayden Barltrop and Glenn Moorhouse) are excellent, bringing much needed dynamism and power to the arrangements.
Dallimore’s direction veers towards vaudeville but that’s at odds with the genuinely creepy presence of El Gallo, while the dreamlike set of sheer white drapes (Hugh O’Connor) survives assaults by the lighting design (Christopher Page) and allows some unearthly moments of fantasy to work well.
Theatre does not exist in a vacuum however and when it heedlessly drags
the everyday nightmare reality for tens of thousands of women into the spotlight as some kind of a joke, the personal becomes political. You might like to dress it up in literary allusion and a pretty tune, but rape and sexual assault are still rape and sexual assault.
A dismal and depressing experience.
NB: The Sexual Assault & Domestic Violence National Help Line may be called any time on 1800 Respect (1800 737 732).
