Review: Fantasticks

Gentle under the paper moon

The story development of this musical, which is quite minimalist in its setting, seems downright plain and simple at first. There is a stage, a curtain, a girl and a boy and, a bit like in Romeo and Juliet, two fathers plotting plots, and a narrator who, leading the events, explains to us what is going on.
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The longest-running musical performance of all time was performed more than 17,000 times in Greenwich Village, in 41 years. It has also been seen in almost 70 countries and filmed a couple of times. The financiers of the New York show received a 20 percent return on their investment, so the business idea worked brilliantly.


The Fantasticks, 1960, is based on the late 19th-century play Les Romanesques by the French dramatist Edmond Rostand, best known for his Cyrano de Bergerac.

The musical also borrows ideas from Shakespeare – who famously borrowed his predecessors from antiquity – and draws on the old traditions of commedia dell’arte, variety shows and vaudeville. The paper moon and the sun are enough as sets.

Fantasticks has also been made in Finland all the time, in 13 theatres, including the Tampere Theatre in 1963 and the last time at the Helsinki City Theatre in 1966. The musical’s (only) hit is the evergreen Remember September.


Retro interpretation
The Hang of Freshness

In addition to piano, percussion and bass, jazzy music is created in Pasila’s studio with harp; The orchestra, led by pianist Lasse Hirvi, plays with a light and precise touch.

The Finnish translation sounds very much like the 1960s. The costumes and the heroine’s make-up and backcombing also refer to the same decade.

Daddy grandfathers Markku Huhtamo and Jarkko Rantanen, who are busy in their vegetable gardens, are kind-hearted bastards whose pasteuristic duets are endearing. The children, Mia Hafrén and Antti Timonen, are fresh musical professionals who have mastered singing, movement and light comedy.

Hafrén has a welcome feminine, fearless radiance to the naïve role. It is needed when quite a large part of the role is tableau-like standing or sitting on the stage or on the side of it, looking somewhere over the audience’s heads.

Sami Hokkanen, who has just graduated from the Theatre Academy, sings effortlessly handsomely as a narrator-magician. Helena Haaranen is his chewing gum-grinding, mute assistant.
Mika Eirtovaara takes care of both the time-worn but uncontrollably passionate, two-year-old itinerant actor and his invisible colleague, who are hired to marry young people. After all, the ragged Shakespearean warhorses act out the death scenes in such a way that they turn into heart attacks – Eirtovaara’s unrestrained farce is hilariously frenetic.

In the 1960s, Fantasticks had to have something particularly fresh and different from the usual entertainment. New York’s population of millions and tourists will then have enough viewers for various productions that will become cult performances – as well as London, such as Agatha Christie’s Mousetrap.

There is a hint of freshness left in this retro interpretation served at the time of the Christmas party.