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Home , 110 in the Shade, Harvey Schmidt, Jerry Orbach, Lucille Lortel Theatre, The Fantasticks, The Theater Center

W E S T O N P L A Y H O U S E T H E A T R E C O M P A N Y 9 1

S H O W N O T E S 0 2 3 Synopsis

A boy. A girl. The fathers that try to keep them apart.

The Fantasticks follows Matt and Luisa, a young couple who fall in love despite the wall built between them. What they don’t know is that their fathers have orchestrated their love story—they've even hired El Gallo, an alluring bandit, to set the scene. El Gallo attempts to capture Luisa, but is defeated by Matt. His heroism unites the two houses, but what seemed romantic in the moonlight becomes far less charming the next day. Reality collides with romance as the young couple falls in love, grows apart, and finds their way back to each other after the September rains. About the Authors

Tom Jones and

Composer Harvey Schmidt and lyricist are the legendary writing team best known for shaping the American musical landscape with their 1960 hit, The Fantasticks. After its Off- opening in May 1960, it went on to become the longest-running production in the history of the American stage and one of the most frequently produced musicals in the world. Tom Jones and Harvey Schmidt Their first Broadway show, , was revived on Broadway in a new production starring Audra MacDonald. I Do! I Do!, their two-character musical starring and , was a success on Broadway and is frequently done around the country. For several years Jones and Schmidt worked privately at their workshop, concentrating on small-scale musicals in new and often untried forms. The most notable of these efforts were Celebration, which moved to Broadway, and Philemon, which won an Outer Critics Circle Award. They contributed incidental music and lyrics to the Off-Broadway Colette starring Zoe Caldwell, then later did a full-scale musical version under the title Colette Collage. The Show Goes On, a musical revue featuring their theatre songs and starring Jones and Schmidt, was presented at the , and Mirette, their musical based on the award-winning children's book, was premiered at the Goodspeed Opera House in Connecticut. In addition to an Obie Award and the 1992 Special Tony Award for The Fantasticks, Jones and Schmidt were inducted into the Broadway Hall of Fame at the Gershwin Theatre, and on May 3, 1999 their 'stars' were added to the Off- Broadway Walk of Fame outside the Theatre. Then in 2012, Jones & Schmidt were honored by being inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame.

Harvey Schmidt died on February 28, 2018 at the age of 88. Tom Jones currently lives in Texas with his family. Biography provided by Music Theatre International The Fantasticks 4

A Love Story for the Ages The Life of The Fantasticks

“There was a chink in the wall between the houses / A flaw the careless builder had never noticed / Nor anyone else, for many years, detected / But the lovers found it—love is a finder, always— / Used it to talk through, and the loving whispers / Went back and forth in safety.”

Pyramus and Thisbe from Ovid’s Metamorphoses (translated by Rolfe Humphries)

For over 1000 years, humanity has been telling the same story over and over again; two young lovers, separated by fate or family or politics, fall in love. Against all odds, they find each other only to be separated once again by death—or, in the case of The Fantasticks, the passing of time. Ovid, Shakespeare, Rostand, and Schmidt and Jones, centuries apart, all tapped into the same bittersweet tale. Along with West Side Story, The Fantasticks is one of the most famous musical adaptations of this story. It wasn’t always clear, however, that it would be a hit.

Tom Jones first encountered Rostand’s Les Romanesques, the source material for The Fantasticks, in college. “I did not think of it as a possible source for a musical,” he wrote in a 1990 introduction to The Fantasticks, “because I did not think of anything as a possible source for a musical.” Schmidt and Jones met while in graduate school at the University of Texas, where Jones was pursuing an MFA in directing. At first, he did not consider himself a writer: “It was only later, when I was in graduate school doing extracurricular work in an organization called the Curtain Club...[that] we began to discover the exhilaration of .”

Jones' first attempt to adapt Les Romanesques was in the early 1950s with collaborator John Donald Robb. They created a called Joy Comes to Deadhorse. The plot was inspired by both Les Romanesques and , centering around two quarreling ranchers, one English and one Spanish. The production premiered in 1956 at the University of New Mexico. “Despite the respectful response from the academic audience and the generally warm reception from the local press,” wrote Jones, “I felt the whole thing was a mess, a totally hopeless mix of style and intentions, with melodrama mixing queasily with whimsy and romanticism.” Robb on the other hand perceived the piece as successful. So, the two split, but gave each other their respective blessing to pursue the project with other collaborators. The Fantasticks 5

Fast forward three years and Jones was in the thick of revising Joy Comes to Deadhorse with Harvey Schmidt. They struggled to make it work in its current form until, finally, the musical collapsed. “We floundered. Never did it occur to us to question the basic premise,” he wrote, “...’can a charming little whimsical play be made into a big cowboy musical, written for Broadway in the Rodgers and Hammerstein manner?’” The two writers then made a bold choice—to throw out the conventions molded by Rogers and Hammerstein in favor for something riskier. “We threw out the R&H model. We gratefully let go of out adjoining ranches and our chorus of cowboys. We threw away the entire script and score, except for a couple of songs. We decided to break all the rules. We didn’t understand them anyway.”

Jones and Schmidt returned to study their source material, Les Romanesques, and emerged with The Fantasticks. It relied on a presentational style of theatre, a bare stage, and the boundless imagination of the actors and audience. Most importantly, the point of the new version was “that one must give up one’s youthful illusions and romanticism and move into the season of maturity and reality.” They returned to the source with each revision as well as the dramatic techniques of Shakespeare, , and commedia dell’arte.

The first version of The Fantasticks was a one act musical that premiered at the Barnard Summer Theatre. While the production received generally positive feedback, one man saw its full potential. Lore Noto, who would eventually produce the celebrated Off-Broadway production, attended the final dress. Despite a few bumps, including the lead actress losing her voice, he was enraptured by what Jones and Schmidt had created. He convinced them to expand the piece into a full-length musical as he pursed backers and a theatre. Unbeknownst to Jones and Schmidt, Noto quit his job and sunk his entire life savings into the production. They all, quite literally, risked everything they had to get the musical on its feet at the Sullivan Street Playhouse.

The production opened on May 3, 1960 to mixed reviews. It was charming, but not enduring. Praiseworthy, but not worth sending readers to the box office. For weeks the audiences dwindled, and the fate of The Fantasticks looked grim. But later that summer, Broadway actors went on strike, sending audiences to off-Broadway . Slowly, the audiences grew, the acclaim started to pour in, and suddenly The Fantasticks was a hit.

“That is what we wanted,” said Jones, “to celebrate romanticism and mock it at the same time. To touch people, and then to make them laugh at the very thing that touched them. To make people laugh, and then turn the laugh around, find the other side of it. To put two emotions side by side, as close together as possible, like a chord in music.” Little did they know that they created the most enduring musical chord in theatre history. The Fantasticks ran at the Sullivan Street Playhouse until 2002, then from 2006-2017 at . It has been produced all around the United States and internationally in at least 67 countries.

“It was a miracle.” wrote Jones. “We had survived.” The Fantasticks 6 Interview with Actress Julie Benko Compiled by Drewe Goldstein, Education Fellow

DREWE GOLDSTEIN: When did you first encounter The Fantasticks? What did you think of it?

JULIE BENKO: I’ve been singing “Much More” since I was 13 years old! When I was in high school, I listened to The Fantasticks original cast album so many times that I eventually wrote all of my own personalized harmony lines for every song. Then, when I was 18 and still a senior in high school, I received one of my first professional auditions ever: for Luisa in the off-Broadway revival of the show in the Theater. I had never seen it live, so after my school day was over, I snuck into a performance at intermission and watched the second act. I fell in love with the show, and, furthermore, knew that I was right for the role and would both nail the audition and book the job. (I did neither.) As the years progressed, I maintained a deep love for the show. When Weston Playhouse asked if I was interested in doing the role, I knew it was a dream come true musically. But upon re-reading the script, I discovered what a gift the script would be as an actor. It is so difficult for musicals to weave together the various elements of script, lyrics, and score into one cohesive work of art, but The Fantasticks masterfully intertwines all of these with poetic beauty, wit, simplicity, wisdom, and heart. I feel so lucky to finally get the chance to explore this rich material. I just hope I manage to serve it well!

DG: What drew you to this character (Luisa)?

JB: When I was younger, I admired Luisa because, as far as ingenues went, she was my ideal of what I thought young women should aspire to be. The casting breakdown for the off-Broadway production I auditioned for described her as “a pretty and petite girl-next-door who is lovely in every way. She is a romantic idealist, an energetic girl with an active imagination.” As such, I imagined Luisa to be a sort of perfect, waif-like Disney princess in the mold of Audrey Hepburn, with a sterling soprano voice to boot. Now that I’m an adult, what draws me to Luisa (in this production, particularly) is the chance to challenge that reductive perception of what it means to be the perfect woman. The script offers many glimmers of Luisa’s more earthly qualities. On the cusp of womanhood, she is both terrified of and excited by the power of her budding sexuality. She is captivated by the idea of wickedness, fantasizes about herself as one of the Sabine women, constantly breaks her father’s rules, and desperately declares her to desire to be “wild, bad, or mad.” She can be selfish, vain, immature, and willfully ignorant. And yet, she can also be deeply loving, enthusiastic, open, and capable of growth. These dichotomies make her as complex and flawed as any real person I know, which is always exciting to dig into as an actor. Moreover, it is tremendously gratifying to grapple with the idea of the female ingenue role in a contemporary context. Luisa’s character was written (by men) over half a century ago—in a play featuring a cast of nearly all men, no less! It’s been thrilling to reimagine the kind of woman Luisa would be in today’s world. For my money, she’s a young woman of great mettle, adventurousness, vigor, and independence.

The Fantasticks 7 DG: How has this ensemble of actors shaped your portrayal of Luisa?

JB: One of my favorite things about working with Susanna Gellert, our director, is her ability to create a relaxed and fun atmosphere of experimentation in rehearsal. She encourages all the actors to put their ideas in the room, no matter how absurd they seem, and to toss in improvisational exercises that we think might be helpful to try. That freedom allows me to find so many moments that have opened up the character in unexpected ways. For example, one day in rehearsal, Francisco (who plays Matt) started playing our Act 2 fight scene using half of the scripted lines and half language of his own choosing. He was so fiery and assertive that I had no choice but to give it right back to him—and then some! Through that exercise, I found Luisa’s spine. As for the other members of our troupe shaping my performance, I have found that the two musicians shape my character immensely. There is a huge amount of underscoring in the show, and it often feels like a direct dialogue between them and Luisa. Allowing the music to live inside the character heightens my emotional life and makes me feel like I am living in an epic poem—which works for Luisa, who can be delightfully delusional in her fairy- tale fancies.

DG: How is this production bringing something new to the classic love story?

JB: Susanna’s staging has struck a really beautiful balance between honoring the original production of The Fantasticks and finding something new to say for today’s audiences. The elements she has introduced to our production are simple, yet highly effective. I don’t want to spoil them for you here, though! So I’ll simply say that one of those elements allows Matt and Luisa to connect in a new way during “Soon It’s Gonna Rain.” In that number, we didn’t want to make it sweepingly grand and romantic. Instead, we wanted to express both the excitement and awkwardness of first love—that thrill, but also that inevitable bumbling ineptitude. Also, in our production, we aren’t approaching Matt and Luisa as a given romantic pair. They weren’t born as soulmates. Instead, their choice to come together is based on their having grown both individually and as a couple. It’s a conscious, mature decision that has nothing to do with fate and everything to do with the hard work that is choosing to love another person, warts and all.

DG: Why perform The Fantasticks today?

JB: As a cast, we’ve had a number of conversations about the significance of the mask in “Round and Round.” Throughout history, we humans have honed the ability, through force of will, to accept easy lies rather than face the uncomfortable truths right in front of us. You’d have thought the rise of the internet might have helped us overcome this moral defect—but instead, it seems worse than ever. We can live in the bubble of our choosing and tell ourselves whatever stories we like about the people living in other, misguided bubbles. And I think this show reminds us that it is our duty to remove that mask—perhaps today we’d call it an algorithm— and take a good, hard look at the cruelty that exists in the world around us. Even though doing so is deeply painful, it is the only way that we can grow and find a better way. “Without a hurt the heart is hollow,” our narrator sings. The Fantasticks challenges us not only to remember the pain we’ve endured ourselves and the suffering we’ve caused others, but to use that wisdom to create a better world as we build our collective future. The Fantasticks 8 Designs and Renderings

The Fantasticks gives us a look into the relationship of a young couple and the magic that brings them together and pulls them apart. Take a look at how our designers brought this musical to life.

Courtesy of Costume Designer Grier Coleman

Courtesy of Scenic Designer Scott Zielinski The Fantasticks 9 Reading List

Other Works by Tom Jones and Harvey Schmidt 110 in the Shade Celebration I Do! I Do! Philemon Related Reading Cymbeline by William Shakespeare Les Romanesques by , BiblioLife, 2009 Musical Theatre: A History by John Kenrick, Methuen Drama, 2017 Pericles by William Shakespeare Discography The Fantasticks (New Off-Broadway Recording), Ghostlight Records, 2006 Filmography The Fantasticks directed by Michael Ritchie, 1995 Online Resources http://englishiva1011.pbworks.com/f/PYRAMUS.PDF http://www.fantasticksonbroadway.com/ https://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/24/theater/reviews/24fant.html

The Weston Playhouse Theatre Company encourages patrons to visit their local library and shop local. Visit the Northshire Bookstore in Manchester to purchase available Weston 101 reading list items. The Fantasticks 10 What are Show Notes?

Show Notes are tailor-made audience guides that accompany every production. They allow patrons and company members to dive into each show and gain well-rounded understanding of what makes this production unique. You can find Show Notes in the lobby before each performance or online at westonplayhouse.org.

Devin Ilaw, Megumi Nakamura and the cast of The Fantasicks in rehearsal

Compiled by: Artistic Associate/ Education Coordinator Rachel Liff Education Fellow Drewe Goldstein