Spectrum Theatre has taken on the world's longest-running musical, The Fantasticks. The musical, written by Tom Jones and Harvey Schmidt, is based on Edmond Rostand's play titled Les Romanesques, a satire of Romeo and Juliet.
The show features two teenagers, Matt and Luisa, who are madly in love, and follows the lengths their fathers go to bring the two together. Their fathers even hire someone to abduct the girl so that the boy can valiantly save her.
Director Mark Gray-Mendes, a fourth year, became familiar with the show when he played the role of the villain El Gallo in a high school production. He has wanted to put on this musical for a while. When Spectrum Theatre approved the show over the summer, he and assistant director AJ Johnson eagerly planned out the show's every artistic detail.
The lead in this production is Scott Harrison, a fourth-year foreign affairs and Latin American studies major. He plays the narrator and the hilarious El Gallo, a character Harrison describes as "the dashing villain."
Harrison has a rich and resonating voice. He sings the much-beloved song "Try to Remember," sung by such stars as Jerry Orbach and Robert Goulet.
Harrison absolutely loved his role: "It was really fun to get to be the narrator and to get to mess up the story."
Lee Kelly, a second-year drama and history major, is the main female character, starring as the young girl Luisa. Her character is a silly, naïve girl who has read too many books -- interestingly, these were all the books Kelly said she herself likes to read -- and "believes life is a storybook ... until El Gallo opens her eyes."
The first act is "much lighter," according to Harrison. It's all about "young love and happiness, it's very theatrical, much more stylized and funny." This is particularly true with "The Rape Ballet," Harrison's over-the-top song that he said was very fun to sing, if "a little awkward." He likens the second act to "the morning after," for "what was pretty in the moonlight is less romantic in the sunlight."
Harrison is a near-constant presence on stage and he often walks down the aisles and talks directly to the audience.
Gray-Mendes believes that this musical resonates particularly well with the college audience, because the college student often feels that "the world is [one's] oyster," and then feels disillusioned when everything "crashes." The boy is essentially "a metaphor for college, excited to see the world."
Gray-Mendes was asked why he thought the show has remained close to people's hearts for so long.
"The themes in it are so far-reaching, it's not set in its time," he said. "There are overarching themes that somehow apply to everyone at some point in their life. ... This show, it both looks back on the past with a nostalgic eye but at the same time turns around and makes fun of it."
This is a likeable balance to the musical, according to Gray-Mendes.
"We can sit there and both laugh at the boy and girl for being so insane and relate to them at the same time," he said.
'The Fantasticks' opens tonight in the Chemistry Auditorium.
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