WORTHINGTON -- "The Fantasticks," a family friendly romantic musical, will show at 7:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday and 2 p.m. Sunday at the Fine Arts Theater of Minnesota West Community and Technical College, Worthington campus.
"It's about two innocent children ... first love -- they romantically fall in love as neighbors," said director Eric Parrish. "Their fathers purposefully deceive them with fake quarreling. They build this wall to keep them apart in efforts to use reverse psychology to keep them together."
The fathers' scheme works, but what happens after the happy ending? And what happens when the two children discover themselves and the real world?
"The Fantasticks" was written in 1960 with music by Harvey Schmidt and lyrics by Tom Jones.
The Minnesota West production incorporates elements of 1960s folk art and off-Broadway style in its whimsical set design.
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"I wanted it to look like a traveling puppet show," Parrish said of the wooden hayride structure that forms a stage on top of a stage, emblazoned with a moon-and-sun logo in folk-art style.
The lights have been lowered to be visible to the audience, and the orchestra is clearly visible on the left portion of the stage. The curtains, borrowed from another theater and made of tied-together or stitched together rags, all deliberately evoke a stagy feel. The props for the show all come from a few large prop chests on stage.
"You're supposed to be aware that you're in a theater," Parrish explained.
The musical's most well-known song is "Try to Remember," a melancholy piece recalling "the time of September when love was an ember about to billow."
The original score was written for harp and piano, but since has been expanded to harp, piano, percussion and bass. Minnesota West's musicians will be pianist Lois Gruis, harpist Anna Gruis, bassist Galen Benton and percussionist Daniel Bartosh.
Casting is equally pared-down -- there are only eight actors involved in the show, with an additional six students in the technical crew.
Jaelle Solt and Kyle VanZandt will portray Luisa and Matt, the lovebirds, and Michael Heidelberger and Curtis DesLauriers are playing their fathers. The roguish narrator El Gallo, a role pioneered by Jerry Orbach, will be played by Paul Rupp.
It is Parrish's first musical at Minnesota West, and the first thing he thought of when he saw Minnesota West's stage was "this would be a great theater to do 'The Fantasticks' in."
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Although the final week before opening night has been hectic and full of last-minute work, Parrish said the cast and crew have really come together to make the magic of theater work.
"I've never really felt the magic of theater as I have with this production," Parrish said.
Tickets for the show will be available at the door.
