At the end of last season, The New Jersey Shakespeare Festival made a diverting digression from classic plays with The Fantasticks, the famously whimsical and long-running musical by Harvey Schmidt and Tom Jones. The oddly delicate 1960 show that opened inconspicuously Off-Broadway and without the benefit of great reviews, delighted audiences and became a hit that ran 40 years. It also proved a resounding hit with the Shakespeare Festival audiences. Perhaps that show's success inspired artistic director Bonnie J. Monte to look ahead to 1961 for her next musical "Carnival," another oddly delicate offering.
Carnival is the musical composer Bob Merrill and book writer Michael Stewart based on the 1953 film "Lili." This musically and dramatically demanding piece opens the Festival's 40th anniversary season under the direction of Bonnie J. Monte, in this her 12th season as artistic director. It's both a hit-and-miss affair for the adventurous Monte, who shows assurance and invention in her first musical undertaking. But she also makes major miscalculations, particularly in trying to turn a seriously-intended musical play into a schtick-filled musical comedy, most evident in her lack of faith in the seriousness of the four-sided plot -- one that demands equal dramatic weight assigned to the four romantically-propelled principals.
The story of an orphaned, slightly mentally- challenged French girl who runs away from home and is awakened to love and life in a small, economically challenged circus, is a charmer. Notwithstanding the almost operatically-scaled score, the story's intimacy and delicacy fit the Festival's stage like a glove, and Monte uses it to eye-filling advantage.
Two parallel stories entwine in typical musical-theater fashion. One involves the innocent Lili (Kate Dawson) and her infatuation with, and dependence upon, Paul Berthalet (Robert Cuccioli), an embittered puppeteer, a former dancer permanently handicapped by war injuries. The other concerns Marco the Magnificent (Paul Mullins), the egocentric womanizer and his on-again-off-again relationship with The Incomparable Rosalie (Tina Stafford). Thrown into the mix of mixed-up misfits are the puppets, whose sass, wit and wisdom bespeak the hearts of the humans. As we wait -- for the inevitable -- for Paul to open up his heart to Lili and for Rosalie to make up her mind whether to marry a gentle veterinarian from Munich or face the future with Marco, we listen to lots of lovely tunes. The most famous is "Love Makes the World Go Round."
Monte's direction smartly makes no claim or attempt to replicate original director Gower Champion's legendary staging. To her credit, Monte, aided by Keely Garfield's athletic choreography, keeps the show moving seamlessly, maintaining a nice balancing act between the music and dramatic action. She incorporates some rather affecting notions about how the show's puppets are portrayed, in this case by humans. Another nice touch is the way the sweet and tawdry aspects of circus life intermix: check out the Bluebird girls as forerunners of the decadent "Cabaret" cuties. As background for Molly Reynolds' affectionately gaudy turn-of-the-century costumes and Steven Rosen's particularly effective atmospheric lighting, is scenic designer Janie Howland's expressionistic setting framed by clusters of masks, its rows of hanging carnival lights and canvas curtains completing the look for B. F. Schlegel's (Bernie Sheredy) poverty row "Grand Imperial Cirque de Paris."
Lily is supposed to be plain, but Dawson can't help being pretty or even considerably older than the part calls for. If Dawson, who made a good impression appearing with Cuccioli at the Festival in Enter The Guardsman, has to work hard at looking naive and insecure, we can't help being ultimately captivated by her loveliness and pure lyrical voice. Her performance does grow richer as the show progresses. She may not be perfectly cast in a role that you may remember was originally played on Broadway by teenage prodigy Anna-Maria Albergthetti (who was 25 when producer David Merrick cast her), but we're ultimately willing to suspend disbelief and be persuaded by Dawson. If she isn't quite convincing her first character number "Mira," in which she tells us of the small comforting town she comes from, she becomes more so with her adoration of the puppets, with whom her relationship is more affecting than with the humans. This is characterized in the charming "Everybody Likes You," as sung by Lili to Carrot Top, everyone's favorite puppet. The puppets, including a fox, and a walrus, are an especially witty and funny group, with a special Brava to the haughty and hilarious diva puppet who recalls singing "high M above L." Cuccioli has a fine and resonant voice and does a super job of incorporating Paul's distress and sorrow into his principal aria, "Her Face," and later in counter point to Lili's "I Hate Him."
Although Marco is supposed to be suave and sexy, Monte has encouraged Mullins to portray him as a black mustached buffoon as outrageously caricatured as any villain in an old melodrama. This makes Lili's infatuation with him totally unbelievable. The miscast Mullins, however, is mercifully more restrained in the second act and earns the laughs he gets with the comically gifted Stafford in their on-stage magic act duet, "Always, Always You." Even more amusing is Stafford's show stopper "Humming," in which she outs Marco's bent for indiscretions. She gets some fine assistance from Sheredy's anxiety-ridden Schlegel. Jacquot, Paul's assistant is a minor character, but in the dexterous hands of Michael Medeiros, he taps our hearts, particularly in his extended miming solo in "Grand Imperial Cirque De Paris."
In general, the cast of twenty, including an array of eccentric roustabouts (one on stilts), entertains us with their antics. If Monte is misguided trying to make a rather dark show light (not to forget that the puppets stop Lili in her attempted suicide), she confirms a gifted instinct for the complexities of musical theater. She gets able assistance also from the excellent musical direction of Jan Rosenberg, and the nine-member orchestra hidden behind the set. My suggestion: To keep going chronologically. 1962 was another good year, so how about No Strings, the too-long- neglected musical by Richard Rodgers to open next season?
