Audience members of all stripes are likely to find much to love in Island City Stage’s charming production of The Fantasticks. After first premiering off-Broadway in 1960 to mixed reviews, this little-show-that-could shocked even its investors by proceeding to run for a record-breaking 42 years. It has since had one major off-Broadway revival, during which it ran 11 more, and continues to be one of the most performed musicals around the world.
But even if you happen to be a long-time Fantasticks fan, you’re in for a sweet new surprise this time around. In this reimagined version of the whimsical classic, which first premiered regionally in 2022, it has been transformed from a story about young love between a boy and a girl to one about young love between a boy and another boy.
As director Andy Rogow points out in the playbill, this actually didn’t take very much alteration to the text. Yet when ingenue “Louisa” becomes” Lewis,” it turns out that an already touching story becomes all the more poignant. First of all, any anti-feminist implications of the only female character in the original Fantasticks being a gullible, naive damsel are obviously erased by this alteration. The character’s quirks now read to me as the understandable affectations of a queer youth searching for his identity—as opposed to tired expressions of a manic-pixie-dream- girl cliche. With an earnest demeanor and impressive bell-clear singing voice, actor Jonny Lee Jr perfectly captures the vibrant soul of the character, who is in a sense the radiant soul of the show.
Just like his predecessor Louisa, 16-year-old Lewis yearns to be special, dreams of adventure,
and is prone to “childlike” flights of fancy. Consequently, it’s easy for him to fall head over
heels for the slightly older and ostensibly worldlier boy next door Matt, played by a promising
Kevin Hincapie with plenty of believable youthful bluster.
Two more gender swaps not only prevent the show from becoming a sausage fest but bring into being two new strong female characters as the lovers’ respective parental figures are made into mothers rather than fathers. This provides an invaluable opportunity for Island City to showcase the talents of two stellar South Florida actresses, Jeni Hacker and Margot Moreland. The two play off each other marvelously as Bessie and Mildred, a pair of mischievous frenemies who stand united only in their quest to meddle in their sons’ love lives. “Plant a Radish” and “Never Say No,” the two duets they share about the frustrations of childrearing, are both major production highlights.
At least as they tell it, Bessie and Mildred’s own 10-year feud with one another is the reason
behind their disapproval of Matt and Lewis’s budding romance, which is the source of the play’s initial conflict. But in the context of a boy-meets-boy love story, I found it hard not to get the idea that homophobic attitudes might be behind the intensity of their response. In turn, Matt and Lewis’s determination to conquer the obstacles thrown at them becomes unexpectedly moving, the wall their mothers have built between their two gardens becoming a symbol of so much more. It’s hard not to get choked up when Matt adamantly declares he will not marry just any girl of his mother’s choosing, “pearl” though she may be.
“I will not wed by your wisdom…. I’ll marry – when I marry – in my own particular way,” he
declares.
But as the play progresses and the real motivations of Matt and Lewis’s mothers become clear, it also becomes clear that The Fantasticks’ true subject is something a little more universal than love overcoming bigotry. Rather, the piece instead seems most concerned with how the fantasy- fueled glow of a new love can endure even in the face of a less enchanting reality.
These themes of illusion versus reality are also reflected in the character of mysterious magician El Gallo (Jesse Luttrell), whose exact role in Matt and Lewis’s courtship I’ll not here give away. Appropriately, its Gallo who transports us from a meta-theatrical frame story into the world of The Fantasticks proper via the show’s iconic opening number, the gorgeous “Try to Remember.”
This was only the first of many truly enchanting moments that Luttrell absolutely nails. In an all-star cast, it was he that perhaps emerged the ultimate standout, bringing captivating charisma, surprising nuance, and world-class comedic timing. He’s well-matched in his hilarity by Michael Gioia and Rayner Gabriel, who play two of Gallo’s thespian henchmen. Rounding out the cast, Louie San Luis proves an engaging presence without a word as a silent character called “the Mute”.
