[NEohioPAL] Berko review: BRIGADOON @ Rabbit Run Theater

[Roy Berko via NEohioPAL]

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*Rabbit Run’s “Brigadoon,” a nice summer theatre experience*

Roy Berko

(Member:  Cleveland Critics Circle, American Theatre Critics Association)

The period of 1943, from the opening of the first book musical, “Oklahoma,”
until 1968, the opening of the tribal rock musical, “Hair,” is commonly
referred to as the Golden Age of the Modern American Musical.  Richard
Rogers and Oscar Hammerstein created such shows as “Carousel,” “The King
and I,” “Flower Drum Song,” and “The Sound of Music.”  That duo was matched
by Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe, who gave us the likes of “Camelot,”
“My Fair Lady,” “Gigi,” and “Paint Your Wagon.”  Thrown in “Annie Get Your
Gun,” “Finian’s Rainbow,” “Music Man,” and “Guys and Dolls,” and you have a
basic understanding of the foundation of our present musical theater.

Rogers and Hammerstein’s scripts featured the meaning of community and had
strong social messages.  Their “South Pacific” is a cry for intercultural
understanding and features the poignant, “You Have to Be Carefully Taught.”


Lerner and Loewe centered their works on highlighting the perfect time, the
perfect place and the perfect love story. “Brigadoon,” a staging of which
is being presented at Rabbit Run Theatre, finds two present-day Americans
lost in the Scottish highlands.  They stumble upon Brigadoon, a mystical 17
th century village that only appears one day every hundred years.  The
magic of the Highlands, the power of love, and the inescapable infinity of
time create the perfect setting for a love story.

 “Waitin’ for my Dearie,” “The Heather on the Hill,” “Come to Me, Bend to
Me,” “Almost Like Being in Love,” “There But for You Go I,” and “From This
Day On,” form a memorable score.  The orchestrations are plush and the
music pushes the well-conceived story along.

As with any good musical plot, there are complications and the required
classic musical theatre device where the first act ends with a problematic
incident, the solution to which is the hinge on which the rest of the story
depends.  In “Brigadoon,” on-going existence is dependent upon no member of
the community leaving.  If a resident departs, the spell which allows the
place to exist, frozen in time and space, will be broken.  When a rejected
love-struck young man attempts to flee, the first act ends with the
question of whether he will succeed and Brigadoon will be no more.

Besides being a charming fantasy, as director R. Scott Posey states in the
program, “’Brigadoon’ is a story of love and faith, and having the courage
to risk everything to gain everything.”

It must be recognized that while Rabbit Run was founded and operated for
many years as a professional summer theatre, where the likes of Jessica
Tandy, Hume Cronin, Dustin Hoffman, Jim Backus and Sandy Dennis performed,
it is now an amateur summer venue.  The cast of “Brigadoon” is mainly
composed of high school and college students.  Teens play adults, so the
MacLaren daughters are about the same chronological age as their father.

What the audience is seeing is basically a high school/community theatre
production.  And, for that level, the Rabbit Run production is quite good
and enjoyable.

Adorable Paige Heidrich is wonderful.  She has a trained voice, sings
meanings not just words, and creates a consistent and real person as Fiona.
Her duets with Brian Mueller (Tommy) were all well sung.

Tom Hill, one of the few adults in the cast, is a perfect curmudgeon as the
teacher and historian, Mr. Lundie.   Handsome Lincoln Sandham has a nice
singing voice and creates a believable Charlie Dalrymple, the young groom.  His
“I’ll Go Home with Bonnie Jean” is delightful.  Hannah Green is charming as
Jean, Charlie’s betrothed.

Brian Mueller (Tommy) has a fine singing voice, but is physically stiff and
unnatural in his character development.  Though she displays enthusiasm,
Katie Moorman misses out in developing the outlandishness of Meg.  The
usually delightful “The Love of My Life” and “My Mother’s Weddin’ Day”
lacked clarity of idea and understandability.

Rabbit Run has little backstage space, tiny wings and no fly gallery.  Tech
Director Paul Gatzke must be a master of the jigsaw puzzle as he creatively
designed set pieces that moved into every nook and cranny of space.

Performing on a postage sized stage, with a huge cast, makes most of the
dancing sequences seem like a Scottish flash mob, each person fighting for
their own space on stage.  Less dancers would have solved this issue.

Karen Ziegler’s costume’s are excellent.  Where she got all the appropriate
clan kilts and shawls is a question of wonder.

Director Possey needed to work with the cast on being more natural,
listening to each other as they speak, and have the chorus not respond like
puppets, with preplanned gestures, movements and facial expressions.  There
was a general feeling of “fakeness” as the cast acted, rather than reacted.

Make sure you go out into the courtyard at intermission to listen to young
Mickey O’Toole, bagpiper extraordinaire.

*Capsule judgment: ** Rabbit Run’s “Brigadoon” is a nice summer escape.  If
audience members enter with no expectations for a professional production
they will have a fine time appreciating several fine performances, while
luxuriating in the music, score, story of one of the American musical’s
finest scripts.*

“Brigadoon” runs through August 2, 2014 at Rabbit Run Theatre at 5648
Chapel Road, Madison.  For tickets go to http://www.rabbitrunonline.org or
call 440-428-7092.  For a special offer of dinner and theatre:  A specially
selected three-course menu offering five entrees, an appetizer, dessert as
well as a theater ticket make up this $55 a person package (tax and tip are
additional).  Reservations for this package may be made by calling Bistro
70 at 440-352-7070.  Bistro 70 is located at 70 N. St. Clair St.,
Painesville, OH.


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