Vital Viewing (Mister Fantastick Edition)

 

What book? What lyrics?

Let's go find Mr. Jones and ask him.

No, not him.

Not him, either.

There's the Tom Jones we want! Lyricist Jones and composer Harvey Schmidt (1929-2018) cooked up twelve stage musicals together, the most well-known of which is...

...this one. Since it opened off-Broadway in 1962 and ran all the way to 2002, a total of 17,162 performances (earning the original investors a 24,000% return), it's no wonder it's the most well-known thing the two ever did. Now, as he passed away just yesterday at the age of 95, I can't really ask Mr. Jones about his book and lyrics. However, what I can do is dig up the following video from when he was still among the living and discussing his most famous work:

If you haven't seen The Fantasticks, let me sum up at least the first act. Two middle-aged fathers, one of a son and the other a daughter, decide amongst themselves that their two kids would make the perfect married couple. The problem is convincing their kids of that. Figuring that reverse psychology would work the best, they pretend to feud, thus turning the son and daughter onto the idea of forbidden love, a la Romeo and Juliet (or maybe Prince Harry and Meghan Markle.) Now that the kids are smitten, the two dads need to end the feud but not the romance. To this end they hire El Gallo, a wise, kindhearted crook with occasional godlike powers, to abduct the daughter (a scheme merrily carried out in the unfortunately titled "Rape Ballet"--try not to judge the semantics of the past too harshly, dear reader, they know not what they say.) Like a boxer in an old black-and-white movie, El Gallo takes a dive when the boy comes to rescue the girl. How can any two young lovers not stay true young lovers after all that?

Jerry Orbach, best-known for his twelve-season portrayal of wisecracking police detective Lennie Briscoe on TV's Law and Order. However, that's not his original claim to fame. Orbach was the first actor (and singer) to play El Gallo in that long-running off-Broadway production. Now, in addition to staging abductions, Gallo also serves as the musical's narrator, giving Orbach the chance to vocalize the show's most well-known number:

I personally associate the month of September not with anything to do with romance but the beginning of the school year. Hearing that song makes me want to bug my mother into buying me a new lunch box, preferably one with Snoopy, but I digress. As Jones said in that interview, The Fantasticks is both a send-up of love stories and at the same time an honest-to-goodness love story. If you pay attention to the following number closely, you can somewhat detect the send-up, but the honest-to-goodness love story is what, for the time being, wins out. Playing the young lovebirds are Matt Leisy and Juliette Trafton, both of whom appeared in a 2010 off-Broadway revival:

As you just witnessed, not only was the above off-Broadway but outside-the-theatre as well. It's actually Bryant Park in Manhattan, something for the lunch crowd before heading back to work.

Now, that happy ending Julliette Trafton refers to is not the musical as a whole, but just the first act. Things sour before--I hope I'm not giving too much away--things get better again. My final video comes before the final happy ending, and I want you to see it because, frankly, it's a hoot. What follows is a 2010 high school production featuring Sara Niemetz (who's gone onto a professional career in the theatre), and this time as El Gallo, Jacob Thomson (who doesn't appear to have turned professional, but he's pretty good anyway.) Watch:

As another Tom Jones once observed, it's not unusual to have fun with anyone.