The Fantasticks

by Toby Zinman

"I want there to be a happy ending," the 16-year-old girl says. Me, too. Neither saccharine nor corny, this luminous production of this charming musical by Tom Jones and Harvey Schmidt provides a delicious two hours, and everybody is likely to leave misty-eyed and humming.

For the first time in their long history, People's Light & Theatre Co. has decided to present a musical, and director Tazewell Thompson has done them proud. With a whiff of Our Town in the period costumes (Marla J. Jurglanis does it again), Thompson emphasizes the theatricality of this story of young love (the girl next door and the boy next door), parental aggravation (To manipulate kids, you just have to say 'No') and the need to experience the wide, wicked world. His agent in all this is El Gallo (the sleek and seductive Forrest McClendon), who orchestrates the moonlight, the meetings, the abduction, the disillusionments, the reconciliations. Lenny Haas is brilliantly funny as the over-the-hill actor who aids and abets the illusions.

The songs are wonderful, and if you've never heard them, this is your chance, since the off-Broadway production, which ran for an amazing 42 years, closed in 2002. The most famous songs are the ballad Try to Remember, about the need to have a romantic and tender September to remember when you're deep in December, and the parental theme song, Plant a Radish, about how it's much more predictable raising vegetables than raising children. Soon it's Gonna Rain is a lovely duet, and the song of adolescent longing, Much More, about wanting to go to town in a golden gown and have my fortune told, is a classic.

The young lovers are sweet and innocent and eager for life: Shelley Thomas and John Wernke are lovely actors with good voices and perfect looks for their roles, although they don't generate much visible chemistry between them. Their fathers, Jim Bergwall and Paul Kuhn, are just the song-and-dance men needed in these roles. Big bravo to musical director Charles Gilbert, who plays piano throughout, accompanied by Walter Pfeil on harp. John Bellomo has choreographed some terrific and often hilarious fight scenes.

And since cheery Act One is about moonlight and magic, while the dark Act Two is, ironically, sunlit, kudos to the lighting designer, Jorge Arroyo, and a tip of the hat to Donald Eastman, whose set design, framing the proceedings in a gorgeous proscenium with old-fashioned footlights, hits just the right note.

THE FANTASTICKS

Through Nov. 30, People's Light & Theatre Co., 39 Conestoga Rd., Malvern, 610-644-3500

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