The Fantasticks

Promethean has enlisted in the effort to ensure that everyone on the planet has an opportunity to see Jones and Schmidt’s musical, which debuted in 1960 at NYC’s Sullivan Street Playhouse and went on to play there for 42 years, almost outliving the original El Gallo, Jerry Orbach. So how is the piece, loosely based on an Edmond Rostand play about lovers covertly brought together by their overtly feuding fathers, holding up?

City Lit’s ragtag space serves it well, and Roger Wykes’s set design, featuring a stage platform rotated by hand, gives this production an enticing homespun quality. Musical director Aaron Benham, abetted on alternating nights by harpists Janelle Lake and Sandra Hobbs, performs Schmidt’s syncopated score with gusto. Devon Candura is a spunky, sweet-voiced Luisa, while, as daft players Henry and Mortimer, Nick Lake and Nathan Drackett knock about the stage with verve. Even if the show comes perilously close to busking, its modest scale has undeniable charm in an age of Broadway musicals designed to shock and awe. Wolf’s staging makes the case that the play can deliver a satisfying one-act experience.

Unfortunately, there are a couple of acts. In its second half, The Fantasticks aims to get serious, with fairly depressing results. As Luisa and her beau Matt (Erik Kaiko) separate, we learn that the outside world is a scary place best avoided via a ludicrous fantasy sequence, which the company to its credit seems half-hearted about. Also in this section, narrator-seducer El Gallo takes on a larger role. While Michael Reyes has a fine baritone voice, he plays the bandit with a solemn, almost medicated demeanor, sapping the piece of the momentum it needs to survive.

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