It’s clear from the opening scene, a flurry of activity as street vendors proffer nosegays and buskers perform amid the arrival of opera patrons, that the creative team, under precise direction by Christopher Clark, pulled out all the stops. Not only is this “My Fair Lady” a visual treat, but the production excels with beautiful vocals and flows with efficient authority.
DeLaney Westfall makes a charming Eliza, balancing headstrong spunk with touching vulnerability. Westfall should command the stage from the first moment, and she’s a bit lost amid the bustle of “Wouldn’t It Be Loverly,” but she begins to radiate in “Just You Wait.” She possesses a soaring soprano to pull off the big finales of numbers like “I Could Have Danced All Night” and “Show Me.” The role requires her to get two English accents exactly right, and Westfall doesn’t disappoint.
Unparalleled for its unsentimentallity, “My Fair Lady” requires just the right sort of curmudgeonly Henry Higgins, and Mark Knowles competently fills the role. For a distinguished phonetician, Knowles’ elocution is mushy, but his talk-songs, which he wisely chooses to not monologue to music, are splendid. He proves to be a skilled actor in a demanding role. The stiff camaraderie between Knowles and Bruce Bredeson, terrific as his fellow bachelor Pickering, is just right.
As Eliza’s besotted suitor Freddy, Adam Dietlein sings a beautiful, stunning rendition of “On the Street Where You Live.” Dispelling concern that a theater associate would land the showcase role, Dietlein leaves the audience wishing he had been written a second solo equaling the lushly romantic song — an impossible task without divine intervention.
David W. Stensrud is a spirited and jovial Alfred P. Dolittle. Stensrud inhabits the role of Eliza’s raffish father with great aplomb, making “With a Little Bit of Luck” and “Get Me to the Church on Time” yet two additional high points.
Also impressing in their roles are JaNae Gibbs Cottam as the prim housekeeper, Mrs. Pearce, and Darla Davis (the company’s only single-cast performer) as Mrs. Higgins, Henry’s exasperated mother.
While Lerner-Loewe purists will miss the full score, clipped here to lighten the show’s usual three-hour length, the essential elements of the soaring melodies are intact. Arguably, “Rain in Spain,” Eliza’s first triumph, was overly abridged. The orchestrations, albethey taped, are full and pleasing.
The carefully cluttered set of Higgins’ study, well appointed with a speech professor’s period contraptions that are used to great effect, fluidly rises from the stage floor. Each scene change is made quickly and staged imaginatively, showing Clark is no stranger to in-the-round theater-directing.
Jenny Barlow’s choreography is efficient and stylized, though the wonderfully sounding ensemble’s dancing is too often unpolished. “My Fair Lady” taxes the resources of regional theaters, but there could easily be more volume (and more seam pressing) to Suzanne Carling’s Cecil Beaton-derived costuming, though many of the show’s signature flourishes are noted.
Even with its blemishes here and there, Hale’s “My Fair Lady” is a joy and highly recommended — and would that all musicals could fare as grand.
SALT LAKE CITY — The Grand Theatre will be taking audiences off to see the Wizard, the wonderful “Wizard of Oz.”
The MGM classic of L. Frank Baum’s tale starring Judy Garland is a pop-culture iceberg. “There’s no place like home,” “I’ll get you, my pretty,” “Lions and tigers and bears! Oh, my!” — who hasn’t used a quote from the much-loved family film? And each of the Harold Arlen-E.Y. Harburg songs is included in the American songbook of treasured standards, with “Over the Rainbow” topping the American Film Institute’s list of best cinema songs.
But successful translating of the film to the stage has proved tricky.
“For community-level theaters, it’s a hard show to pull off,” said director Porter Williams. “There’s a lot of costumes, and there’s some technical effects that are really daunting. Trying to work around them without making them feel underwhelming is really difficult. We’ve struggled with that, but I think we’ve come out on the good side.”
His confidence is a result of working closely with the show’s creative and technical team, devising some innovative solutions to the inherent challenges and a recognition that if they “tried to recreate the movie aesthetically, we would fail.
“Respecting the icons of the show without being slaves to them has been the balance throughout the production process,” Williams said. “When people come see the show, it’s going to be instantly recognizable but it’s going to feel very different. The heart of the show is the same, but visually the show is quite different. I just got to see the head of Oz yesterday for the first time, and it’s really cool. We’ve also done some really innovative work with projections, and for Salt Lake it’s pretty groundbreaking.”
Beyond the pyrotechnics, multiple sets and costumes, and the indelible imagery from the 1939 Oscar-winner, what has been Williams' biggest challenge?
“Toto," he said with a laugh. "Getting her to run to Dorothy predictably. The first time Toto did it on stage there was a huge cheer from the cast. It involved a lot of treats and a lot of practice.”
The 30-member cast includes 12 child actors and local favorite Max Robinson playing the Wizard.
“As a young director who grew up seeing nearly every Max Robinson performance at Pioneer Theatre, it was overwhelming to consider directing him,” Williams said. “But he has been great to work with and he makes an excellent Wizard.”
After the opening of “Wizard of Oz,” it will be decided if Williams receives Cowardly Lion’s badge of courage — or if his goal should have been the award given by the wizard to Scarecrow.
WEST VALLEY CITY — It can be an intimidating challenge to restage a record-setting, classic musical that won six Tonys and eight Oscars for the subsequent film version.
But director Chris Clark has a firm vision for Hale Centre Theatre’s “My Fair Lady.” He found vitality in the musical’s source, the George Bernard Shaw play, “Pygmalion.”
“I was more inspired by the play, ‘Pygmalion,’ than I was ‘My Fair Lady,’ the movie,” Clark said. “ ‘My Fair Lady’ is really just ‘Pygmalion’ with some amazing songs added on to it.”
While it’s widely known that the British playwright’s acclaimed 1912 play begat the musical, the general public is less aware of a 1938 film of “Pygmalion” that was a financial and critical success, winning an Oscar for best screenplay and three other nominations.
“It’s just such a terrific play,” Clark said. “It has such a great message, and it’s so well written. The play is so witty and the characters are so funny and clever.”
Clark worked to incorporate an authentic “spirit of the place” into the production. For the past six years, he has led student theater tours to London. Knowing he would be directing “My Fair Lady, he visited the play’s various locations during last year’s excursion, taking notes and photographs that influenced his staging.
The story revolves around Eliza Doolittle, a coarse, working-class flower peddler, who agrees to take speech lessons from phonetician Henry Higgins and become transformed, as part of a wager, from a “squashed cabbage leaf” to pass as a duchess. Eliza succeeds so well, however, that she outgrows her social station and — in a development added to the musical — even manages to get Higgins to fall in love with her.
“We don’t here have the same view of the class system that has been so prevalent in England, but the play is about self-improvement,” Clark said. “It’s about seeing beneath the surface and rising above and improving our individual circumstances.”
With some critics arguing that it is “the perfect musical,” “My Fair Lady” is viewed as one of the most intelligent romantic comedies ever produced. Shaw’s brilliant, adapted dialogue is a perfect amalgamation of well-honed wit and barbed satire, and the script closely follows the original thoughtful and poignant story.
The “My Fair Lady” score, by the incomparable Alan Jay Lerner-Fredrick Lowe team that also crafted “Camelot” and “Gigi,” adds to the musical’s richness. The numerous now-classics include “Wouldn’t It Be Loverly?” “I Could Have Danced All Night,” “On the Street Where You Live,” “Show Me,” “Get Me to the Church on Time” and “I’ve Grown Accustomed to Her Face.”
Each of the tender ballads with soaring melodies and quirky charm songs are intact in the production, but Clark worked with the musical’s copyright holder to “streamline” the show from a three-hour running time to just over two hours.
“Most people won’t notice the changes,” he said. “The show moves very quickly; the story is told with an urgency. It’s great for a modern audience.”
Rarely have so many minutes in a theater been passed as enjoyably as with “My Fair Lady.”
At the BYU Young Company theater for youngsters production of the award-winning book, “The 100 Dresses,” audiences will learn about judging others by their appearance, bullying and being an “upstander” versus a bystander.
“The story has the potential to motivate us to do kind things to others, to have true compassion,” said director Julia Ashworth. “It explores issues like what does it mean to be a friend to others and what friendship looks like.”
Based on the Newbery Honor-winning classic children’s book by Connecticut children’s author Eleanor Estes, the new 50-minute stage adaptation was scripted by internationally regarded playwright Mary Hall Surface, a Helen Hayes Award winner for excellence in theater.
The "100 Dresses" main character, Wanda Petronski, a poor immigrant from Poland, just wants to be liked by the other girls in her class, so she tells them about her collection of 100 dresses. The other kids don’t believe it, and they tease her relentlessly. But there is Madeline, the one girl trying to do the right thing and stick by Wanda.
“Everyone has been in Maddie’s situation,” wrote one teenager following a previous “100 Dresses” staging in Seattle. “Everyone has faced peer pressure. These characters tell us that we, like them, can make the right choice next time.”
“Redemption is one of the main themes,” Ashworth said “Madeline discovers that there is no do-over, but she can do better in the future.”
While this story is set in 1944, “the issues are identical to what we still face today,” she added. “Bullying is very prevalent and takes place all around us. There is also a lesson for adults on how we can exclude others just because of their differences.”
The “100 Dresses” company collected more than 100 dresses to donate to local charities, and many are on display adjacent to the theater.
Following the Pardoe Theatre staging, the eight-member cast of BYU theater students will take the show on tour to up to 40 schools throughout Utah and Salt Lake counties. At each staging, the cast will also hold workshops with students to review the themes of the production and will encourage students to also collect up to 100 dresses to donate to local charities.
“We are hoping that these dresses will not just be everyday dresses but special-occasion dresses that are more needed in these communities,” Ashworth said.
When the Broadway superstar and concert soloist steps on stage for the Oct. 6 and 7 BYU Spectacular homecoming event, it will be Mitchell’s fifth performance in the state, following three guest artist invitations from the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and a previous BYU de Jong solo concert.
“Each time I have performed in Utah, I had a great time and the audiences seem to enjoy what I do,” Mitchell said in a Deseret News interview from his Manhattan home. “The audiences are very warm and very appreciative. There is a built-in appreciation for music that is so much a part of the LDS culture. Utahns know that music can be divine and can touch a person’s spirit in a unique way.”
Following his BYU concert last May, BYU vocal-performance students had the unparalleled opportunity to attend an intimate master class taught by Mitchell. “And we just fell in love with him, as a performer and a gentleman,” said Janielle Christensen, artistic director for Spectacular. “He is a great talent and shares so many of our same values as far as the performing arts and how they can enrich and enlighten us to become better individuals.
“He does so much more than sing a song. Mr. Mitchell makes the song live and makes you feel better. He has an intense vision that he brings to performing that involves light and truth and his own joie de vivre.”
His joy-enfused performing is a unique trait that has been heralded as “happiness bursting out of him that is as natural as breathing” by the New York Times’ Stephen Holden. The reviewer has also called Mitchell “a singer who dares you to be happier than you ever dreamed.”
Utah concert audiences were first introduced to Mitchell’s powerhouse baritone at the 2008 O.C. Tanner Gift of Music American Songbook concert that featured Mitchell performing with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and the Utah Symphony. Not only did concertgoers respond enthusiastically to his joyful, commanding performance, but a warm friendship developed between Mitchell and the choir’s musical director, Mack Wilberg.
“I can count on one hand the number of conductors-composers-arrangers that I enjoy working with, and at the top of that list is Mack Wilberg,” Mitchell said. “I feel like I’ve known Mack forever. I’m just nuts for him.”
Wilberg speaks just as enthusiastically about Mitchell and his contributions to the choir’s excellence. "Brian Stokes Mitchell is one of those rare complete performers," Wilberg said. "He can do it all: sing, play, compose and arrange. And he does it all with such great charisma and aplomb. He is a true friend of the choir.”
The Tony Award-honored Mitchell was raised in a musical household and said his family recognized the majesty of Mormon Tabernacle Choir music.
“When I was asked to perform with the choir, I was, of course, very excited but also slightly intimidated. The choir is a wonderful American institution and widely known for its musical gifts. But after I started working with Mack and the choir, I realized, Wow. You can’t work with better people.
“And the Conference Center is an amazing performance space. Even though it’s a 21,000-seat hall, it has a very intimate feel.”
His most recent choir performance was at July’s Pioneer Day commemoration concert with soloist Linda Eder, the first time the event had featured guest artists.
Mitchell’s “Ring, Christmas Bells” performance with the choir at the 2008 Christmas concert was the first DVD release of the annual event — and both the CD and DVD are strong sellers and critically acclaimed, both within and outside the LDS recording community.
One of the songs, “Through Heaven’s Eyes,” a Stephen Schwartz composition that Mitchell introduced in the animated hit “Prince of Egypt,” is “consistently in the top-five downloads of all of the choir’s recordings every reporting period,” according to the choir’s general manager, Scott Barrick.
The number of Mitchell’s choir performances is unprecedented. “We wouldn’t have someone back three times unless he is wildly popular,” Barrick said.
While it was not on the evening’s song list, at the personal request of the president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Mitchell performed “Impossible Dream,” which President Thomas S. Monson has said is among his favorite songs, at the Christmas performance he attended. Mitchell received one of his four Tony nominations for his role in the 2002 Broadway revival of “Man of La Mancha.”
“The song ‘Impossible Dream’ is very powerful,” Mitchell explained. “It was such a joy to sing it for President Monson. He responds to ‘Impossible Dream’ the same way that everyone does. You can’t help but be affected by its strength.”
Mitchell sees the great power that is transferred through song.
“Music for me is the most sacred of the arts,” Mitchell said. “I say that because music communicates in a way that no other art form can. All great art has a spirit that we recognize and appreciate, but music goes directly to your heart.
“When I perform, I try to tap into that part of me and try to touch people in a metaphysical way that I don’t fully understand,” he said. “It’s wonderful space, but also a terrifying space and a joyous and happy space.”
At the BYU event, Mitchell will perform both solo and with the university’s student performing groups. The Spectacular artistic director explained she was astonished to find Mitchell so willing to perform songs for the two-night event outside his usual concert repertoire.
“His concern for his BYU performance was not personal but he wanted to know how he could help to make the show the best it could possibly be,” Christensen said. “We feel that it was a magical moment that we were able to make this performance happen.”
Among other songs, Mitchell will sing “They Call the Wind Maria,” in a “Paint Your Wagon” segment with Men’s Chorus and the Philharmonic Orchestra, and “Stand By Me” in the Young Ambassadors’ trio of numbers dedicated to families. Additionally Mitchell will perform “Make Them Hear You,” a song he premiered in the hit 1998 Broadway show, “Ragtime.” In the show’s finale, he will sing “Impossible Dream” with the Men’s Chorus and Philharmonic Orchestra.
The sophisticated, glowingly brilliant and completely enthralling musical at Pioneer Theatre Company is a not-to-be-missed production.
While the unsentimental plot ostensibly revolves around a family coping with mental illness, the central theme is a powerful one: familial love and loss. The “rock” music is not backbeat-driven, vocal wailings, but better described as rock-influenced Broadway ballads that contribute perfectly to the storytelling.
To describe the poignant trigger and its repercussions at the dramatic core of the musical would be revealing details that the play’s authors, honored with a Pulitzer for this work, clearly intend to unfold gradually during the course of the play. There are birthday cakes, prom dates and the “next to normal” daily routines of any other American family.
The score, full of insightful wit and with the impact of a boxer’s punch, has music by Broadway veteran Tom Kitt and first-time lyricist (and book writer) Brian Yorkey and earned the team a hard-fought Tony. While including rough words not often spoken in Salt Lake households, the songs have a freewheeling, conversational tone and ping-pong through the family’s highs and lows.
Modern-day housewife Diana Goodman suffers from bipolar depression, but that is perhaps a too-simple explanation for her anguish. Her husband, Dan, is engaged in supporting her and finding effective treatment. The Goodmans have a son and daughter, each with their own story to tell. The other characters are Natalie Goodman’s boyfriend, Henry, and two health professionals, each played by a single actor.
In one of the show’s first productions after its Broadway run, Karen Azenberg directs a confident, highly professional cast, and each performance is beat-for-beat emotionally on target — heart-wrenchingly so. Because the play is virtually sung-through, the singing is a major component, and the professional PTC cast has soaring, octave-ranging beauty yet not as full-throated as anticipated.
The interwoven “You Don’t Know”/“I Am the One” by Judy McLane as Diana and Jonathan Rayson as Dan is raw and searing and one of the play’s highlights. The actors immerse themselves in their roles and bare their individual anguish with ferocious intensity.
The vibrant duet is followed by a masterful “I’m Alive” by Matt Dengler, whose character provides both inspiration and despair. His role is the play’s linchpin, and the terrific young actor is nothing short of amazing.
As the teens at the beginning of a relationship, the talented Ephie Aardema is a bundle of frustrations and angst as Natalie and the guilelessly charming Alex Brightman is ideal as Henry. In smaller roles, a noteworthy Ben Crawford humanizes the two doctors. His pharmacological version of “My Favorite Things” is a welcome moment of lightheartedness.
Lawrence Goldberg leads the vital but uncredited pit orchestra, light on percussions that added so much radiance to the original recording. The tri-level set design by George Maxwell grounds the production in reality yet hints at the family’s upheaval. Michael Gilliam’s lighting adds tension, and costume designer Carol Wells-Day continues to explore color intensity as a dramatic tool.
Unforgettable theater leaves audiences with much to ponder, and PTC’s “Next to Normal” is an illuminating production. Snippets of the show’s powerhouse ballads reverberate long afterward.
There is no real resolution in “Next to Normal” and no answers are offered. But we learn that "even the darkest skies will someday see the sun."
PARK CITY — In “The Fantasticks,” boy meets girl, boy loses girl and boy gets girl back. But it’s more — much more, to borrow a lyric — than a simply told fable. It’s a blissful celebration of the art of theater.
The Broadway in the Mountains production, at the Egyptian Theatre through Sunday, is a lovingly crafted tribute to the original staging of “The Fantasticks.” The show debuted in 1960 at Greenwich Village’s 153-seat Sullivan Street Theatre and continued playing there for 42 years, becoming the world’s longest-running musical and creating a record unlikely ever to be equaled.
There is a legion of theatergoers who recount their visits to the off-Broadway landmark, with its half-oval seating arrangement that required patrons to walk across the stage to their seats, with wistful accounts of seeing the iconic roles performed by Kristin Chenoweth, F. Murray Abraham, Glenn Close, Elliot Gould or Liza Minnelli.
This is an enchanting “Fantasticks,” with insightful performances and wonderful music. Director Terence Goodman retains many elements of the milestone production and juxtaposes reality with theatrics. His decisions underscore the whimsical allegory about the romance of a young couple, Matt and Luisa, who find their relationship tested by their meddling fathers and the bandit, El Gallo. Goodman wisely relies on his skilled actors to invite audiences to recall their own memories of this delightful musical or to experience its joys for the first time.
New York actor Dennis Parlato takes a mature approach to the swashbuckling role of El Gallo, the musical’s narrator and puppet-master. Having played the role, after being cast by the show’s creators, in the Sullivan Street production and the New York City revival, Parlato knows the part of El Gallo well. Firmly understanding the half-sentimental, half-cynical tone of his character, the actor makes the philosophical storyteller accessible and familiar. His singing of the tender “Try to Remember” is just right.
The trip to Park City would be worth it alone to bask in the performances of Parlato and four other startlingly talented actors. Jim Dale as Henry, the enfeebled Shakespeare thespian, and Andy Johnson as his sidekick Mortimer, the specialist in dying scenes, milk all the humor in their roles as they participate in El Gallo’s raid to warn Matt of the hardships of the world.
Masterful entertainers Jonathan McBride and W. Lee Daily play the conniving widower fathers who trick their offspring into falling in love. Their Tweedledum and Tweedledee performances wholly embrace their characters’ vaudevillian roots and further delight in their wink-wink additional roles the director has devised.
While it’s to his credit that the director has cast actors the same age as their characters, Gracie Brietic and Taylor J Smith charm and give their all to their roles but ultimately disappoint. To be most effective, the couple’s progression from puppy love affection to become more world-aware with a wise, realistic view of love is readily apparent.
As Luisa, the lovely Brietic is full of wide-eyed wonder in “Much More” and has a lovely voice but her upper register is noticeably weak. Smith makes an appealing “callow fellow,” and his “They Were You” is tenderly sung but “I Can See It” should be more full-throated.
Musical director Anne Puzey leads the exemplary accompaniment of piano, harp and percussion and does credit to the timeless melodies.
The squares of multi-colored confetti tossed into the air are justified at the show’s conclusion. “The Fantasticks” is a show that lives up to its name.
