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August 7 - 14, 1997
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Walk on the child side

Peter Pan at Wachusett and Mirette at Goodspeed play for the kids

by Steve Vineberg

MIRETTE Book by Elizabeth Diggs. Based on Mirette on the High Wire by Emily Arnold McCully. Music by Harvey Schmidt. Lyrics by Tom Jones. Directed by Andre Ernotte. Choreographed by Janet Watson. Musical direction by Michael O'Flaherty. Sets designed by Neil Patel. Costumes by Suzy Benzinger. Lighting by Timothy Hunter. With Cassandra Kubinski, James J. Mellon, Anne Allgood, Jason Wooten, Verna Pierce, Paul Blankenship, Leslie Ann Hendricks, Amanda Watkins, Steve Pudenz, and Michael Hayward-Jones. At the Goodspeed Opera House, East Haddam, Connecticut, through September 18.

PETER PAN Based on the play by James M. Barrie. Music by Mark Charlap and Jule Styne. Lyrics by Carolyn Leigh, Betty Comden, and Adolph Green. Directed by Cheryl Carter. Choreographed by Laurel Stachowicz. Musical direction by David Twiss. Sets designed by Peter Wolf. Costumes by Brad Kenney and Paula Ouellette. Lighting by Cindy Baer. With Trish Aponte, Phil Roy/Evan Graber, Amy Bonneau/Bethany Fournier, Brian Demers, Ian Matysiak, Melissa Smith, Rachelle Lee Vachon, and Brent Hopkins. A Wachusett Theatre Company production, at Wachusett Regional High School, Holden, through August 16.

Mirette There haven't been many musicals tailored specifically for children, but this odd little subgenre does have a history that's just about as long as the history of musical comedy itself. Victor Herbert, the first composer of American musicals, wrote one, Babes in Toyland, in 1903, basing it on the time-honored English tradition of Christmas pantomimes. In movies, we've had The Wizard of Oz, of course, and decades of Disneys, both animated and live-action; a number of others are aimed solidly at the family audience, including some memorable ones: Meet Me in St. Louis, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, Calamity Jane. Rodgers and Hammerstein musicalized Cinderella for television in the late '50s (and new editions were telecast in the '60s and the '90s). And as it happens, at the moment Worcester audiences have their choice of two: they can check out Peter Pan at Wachusett Regional High School, in Holden, or drive out to East Haddam to see the new Mirette at the Goodspeed Opera House. (It was workshopped in Goodspeed's alternate theater in Chester two seasons ago.)

Mirette is something you rarely see in a musical -- an underachiever. Based on a children's book, Mirette on the High Wire by Emily Arnold McCully, it tells the story of the bond that grows between a little girl, the daughter of a boardinghouse keeper in turn-of-the-century Paris who caters to show-biz folk, and the secretive high-wire artist who takes refuge in her home. She falls in love with the art that he once dedicated his life to and then, suddenly and unaccountably possessed by fear, ran away from at the height of his celebrity. "The great Bellini" trains Mirette, and his feeling for her helps him to conquer his fear. And that's the whole story. There are no other complications, except for Mirette's mother's understandable reluctance to allow her to pursue so dangerous a vocation. The two subplots -- one involving the unrequited love of a clown for a dancer, another centering on the hard luck of several of the tenants at Mme. Gateau's boardinghouse -- are underwritten and left dangling at the second-act curtain.

The idea of Elizabeth Diggs's script seems to be to water down the musical-comedy form for a family audience; but children generally adore dense, plot-driven musicals, so a show like Mirette cheats them. It provides little of the pleasure of the genre: the score by Harvey Schmidt and Tom Jones (best known for The Fantasticks) is bland and charmless, the characters are one-dimensional (which leaves the hard-working performers at sea), and there's hardly any drama. The show even lacks shape. The first act ends with a confrontational duet between Bellini (James. J. Mellon) and anxious Mme. Gateau (Anne Allgood), in which each accuses the other of trying to remake Mirette (Cassandra Kubinski) into his or her own image. "She isn't you!/She isn't you!" they sing angrily at each other (both Mellon and Allgood are strong singers), and suddenly we're at intermission, though the plot has scarcely gotten started. In act two, Bellini takes out his frustration on Mirette, she languishes in a distinctly undramatic depression, and they both end up on a tightrope stretched across Paris. I haven't looked at McCully's book, but the plot sounds as if it might support a thin hardback with more pictures than text. It certainly doesn't support a two-and-a-quarter-hour musical play.

Even the tightrope-walking climax is in fact an anti-climax. The two actors, with safety wires clamped conspicuously to their necks, venture across a broad, clearly visible glass girder. It doesn't look risky; it doesn't even look interesting. Obviously the director, Andre Ernotte, didn't want to imperil the actors, but it would make more sense to stage the tightrope act behind cheesecloth so that it gave at least the impression of danger. In the Wachusett Theatre Company production of Peter Pan, Peter (Trish Aponte) and the Darling children fly about the stage in ways that are standard in productions of this musical, but the flying is a foolproof crowd pleaser -- it supplies a frisson of excitement, even for adults in the house who have probably seen this effect before. A little bit of enchantment is the minimum requirement of a children's show, it seems to me, and Mirette lets its audience down.

I've never been a Peter Pan aficionado, but compared to something as paltry as Mirette, it delivers. The book is pretty much a reconstituted version of the James M. Barrie play, which was performed for decades (most famously by Maud Adams) and retains some of its late-Victorian charm: the cozy nursery with its view of the roofs of London, the fussy St. Bernard who nurses the children, the ultra-feminine Wendy who's a miniature version of her doting mother, and so on. The theme is compelling: the tension between the dream of idling in an eternal childhood and the call to adulthood that, unlike the sexless waif Peter, the rest of us don't have the option or, ultimately, the inclination to resist. It's easy to see why the story laid claim to so many readers, and why Barrie's play has been so popular with adapters.

This version, with songs by Mark Charlap and Carolyn Leigh and additional songs by Jule Style and Betty Comden and Adolph Green, is one of three musicalizations of the material. Walt Disney produced one that most people have seen, and there was a 1950 stage version with a handful of Leonard Bernstein tunes. Jean Arthur played Peter that time, four years before Mary Martin, though it was Martin whose performance eclipsed all of her predecessors' -- even Maud Adams's -- when it was televised in 1955.

The score in this version has been sung by children everywhere, but it's unimaginative and syrupy, and that long middle act is a big problem -- it's just a series of entrances and exits with some poorly thought-out battle scenes in between. In the Wachusett Theatre Company production, what rescues act two is choreographer Laurel Stachowitz's staging of the "Ugg-a-Wugg" number, a celebration of the new alliance between Peter's lost children and Tiger Lily (Melissa Smith) and her Indian braves. Stachowitz saves up her best ideas for this grand, leap-happy, eruptive number -- and her best dancers. The three athletic men who do the most impressive dancing are (I think) double-cast as pirates, which is why they don't take their curtain call with the Indians. I don't know their names, but they deserve to be singled out -- though everyone in the "Ugg-a-Wugg" number deserves applause.

Stachowitz, director Cheryl Carter, musical director David Twiss, and technical director Joe Kalinowski are clearly unified in the desire to bring their audiences the deluxe treat of a big Broadway musical. The rented sets are the ones Peter Wolf designed for the last Broadway revival, and their outsize, storybook style cushions the show. You can feel the enthusiasm of the kids on stage -- there are dozens of them -- about performing on this kind of scale, under the supervision of people who obviously know how to helm a show of this magnitude. The visual elements of the production aren't especially inventive, but they're cannily devised and executed, especially the flitting, crimson Tinker Bell, the lush, cartoony animals (Nana the dog, the ticking crocodile who stalks Captain Hook, and a rather sweet ostrich), and especially the scene where Peter teaches the Darling kids how to fly.

The numbers are well sung, especially by Trish Aponte and Amy Bonneau, who has played Wendy for the past two weekends. (She'll be succeeded this week by Bethany Fournier.) These two harmonize on "Distant Melody" -- the show's musical highlight. Aponte is a very talented performer, and she certainly plays Peter Pan as intended -- the way Mary Martin played it, and probably Sandy Duncan and Cathy Rigby (though I didn't see either of them in it): in a cutesy, mock-boyish style. To my mind, however, the fact that the show imposes this kind of style on the performer in the title role -- i.e., forces her to play down to the character, putting quotation marks around his lines -- is one of its limitations.

The pirates in this production are hammier than necessary, though Brent Hopkins makes an ingratiating Smee. Phil Roy, whom I saw in the dual role of Hook and Mr. Darling (Evan Graber will replace him for the second half of the run), should have been directed to tone it down a little, and he would have been better off scrapping that unconvincing English accent altogether. Rachelle Lee Vachon, Brian Demers, and Ian Matysiak are fine as the other members of the Darling family. I enjoyed all the principal Lost Children, especially Michael Lemire, who shows confidence and presence in the role of Slightly. This Peter Pan has the feel of a triumphant summer-camp show, and I mean that without condescension. It has sweep and spirit.



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