‘Fantastick’ voyage: Play On! will share classic

By The Daily Progress Staff

Published: September 4, 2008

Play On! — A New Virginia Theatre will bring the world’s longest-running musical to its home stage at the Theatre at Ix.

The hit musical comedy opens 8 p.m. Thursday and runs through Sept. 27.

First-time director Megan Randall served as stage manager for Play On!’s production of “Guys and Dolls.’’ She’s working with musical director Ben Jamieson, who served in the same position for the theater group’s “Man of La Mancha’’ last year.

Randall’s cast includes Randy Clark as El Gallo, Jessica Wilbert as Luisa, and Jamieson as Matt. Also in the cast are Ken Waller, Stevens Garlick, Jake Roth, Dawna Jo McCracken and Meagan Tomlin. The curtain first rose on “The Fantasticks’’ by Tom Jones and Harvey Schmidt in 1960 at a small off-Broadway theater. The production ran for 17,162 performances before closing on Jan. 13, 2002. A new revival currently is in New York City’s Snapple Theater Center.

El Gallo serves as narrator for a story of love and intrigue, occasionally breaking in to take part in the story himself. Young lovers Matt and Luisa lose and find each other several times along the way — in no small part due to their fathers’ meddling.

The fathers are good friends, but they cook up a feud and build a wall between them, partly to encourage the young couple to defy the forces that come between them. Elements of the ancient myth of Pyramus and Thisbe can be seen in the work. Other parts of the fathers’ plot, such as a staged kidnapping intended to draw the young lovers closer, tend to backfire.

Tickets are $17 to $10, and children younger than 12 get in with a paying adult. Thursday’s are “pay what you will’’ nights. Parking at 983 Second St. SE is plentiful and free. Visit http://www.PlayOnTheatre. org or call 872-0184.