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Anna Phillips-Brown

Prof. Carl Boles

Acting I

April 27, 2017

The Fantasticks at The Theater Center in New York

Many people know and love the classic American musical, The Fantasticks. In fact, it is

the longest running show ever, and will be finishing up its 20,672nd performance in New York

City when it closes at last in June. Fortunately for me, I had just enough time to catch a

performance a couple weeks ago while in the city. Walking up the four steep flights of dingy

steps to get to the cramped lobby of the black box theatre may serve as a red flag to some, and

admittedly made me wary about what I was about to see. I tend to dislike most productions of

The Fantasticks for reasons that will soon be divulged. Despite its simple appearance, however,

the show itself was anything but, and very much more worth my seventy dollars than the over

one hundred put towards Anastasia on Broadway.

The show begins with an entrance from the Mute, an acrobatic character whose purpose

is to provide the setting for the different scenes of the story, and it may be implied that he is a

mysterious assistant to the elusive El Gallo, coincidentally one of my favorite characters in

American musical theatre. The Mute ushers in each character and issues them a costume piece,

defining who they will be playing in the story. The show itself is very presentational and surreal,

which many theatres fail to recognize, but I’ll touch on that later. Due to this, as the characters

appear they are entering as actors with slight suggestions of the traits their characters will

present, further alluding to the world in which the play is set, between reality and fantasy.
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The reason I tend to dread seeing this show, and that one Louisa monologue that every

female who has ever set foot on a stage knows, is that over the course of time it has been often

forgotten that the show is not in any way, shape, or form realistic. Even the script includes

whimsical illustrations with every scene, making it far from traditional, but more playful. Setting

this show in realism makes it appear tacky, uncomfortable, and misogynistic beyond belief. The

Off-Broadway production steered well clear of all of this, providing a genuinely hilarious, dark,

and intriguing production. The actors all had a very clear sense of their objectives and obstacles,

of course, but it was particularly interesting to see the clear differences such elements had

between the actor playing an actor, and the actor playing a part in the story. Such clear, concise

work can only be achieved through meticulous and organized work, defining objectives,

moments before, high stakes obstacles, and many more.

The highlight of any production of The Fantasticks, particularly this one, is the dynamic

and elusive El Gallo, the narrator and the performer who stages the rape (more accurately as a

result of rewrites and updates over the years, the kidnapping) of Louisa. His actions throughout

the story are so unpredictable, that he has the most scansion work to do of all the characters. He

dodges in and out of the boundaries of the fourth wall, all while having about 5 separate

objectives, moments before, and conflicts. The level of multitasking necessary to perform the

challenging role is nothing less than dumbfounding, and exactly what every actor strives to be—

an expert multitasker.

In conclusion, what made this Off-Broadway show such a legendary and prolonged

success was the intricate work put in by each and every actor. Such work does not come from

simply memorizing lines then hopping onstage. Understanding a character to one’s best abilities

is what transforms a performance from entertaining to entrancing, and allows the actors to
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achieve the necessary depth for crawling into someone else’s skin for roughly two and a half

hours.