This review was originally written for artsHub.
Written in 1960,
you could be forgiven for thinking that The
Fantasticks is a period piece. But in the Wooden Horse/Hayes Theatre Co production directed
by Helen Dallimore, Tom Jones and Harvey Schmidt’s musical is brought forward
in a clever and, for the most-part, considered staging which exudes a quirky
kind of charm. Sitting somewhere
between Romeo & Juliet and a Tim
Burton film (think, Big Fish), with a
dash of a twisted
Elizabethan revenge drama, The
Fantasticks is the story of two single fathers (Laurence Coy and Garry
Scale) who want their children (Jonathan Hickey and Bobbie-Jean Harding) to
fall in love, so pretend they’re in the midst of a bitter feud, and build a
wall between their two houses. Unable to determine how to end the feud, they
enlist the help of El Gallo, a Pirandellian narrator-cum-stage
manager, who concocts a diversion to ensure everything ends well. Or does it?
