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Regional Reviews: St. Louis Anastasia Also see Richard's review of Wolf Kings
The libretto is by the prolific author Terrence McNally, with music and lyrics by Stephen Flaherty and Lynn Ahrens, of movie and TV fame, in a tale taken from the animated film of 1997. After premiering at the Hartford Stage in 2016, the musical moved to Broadway the next season and was nominated for two Tonys, for best featured actress and for costumes, in an awards season otherwise dominated (in the musical categories) by Dear Evan Hansen and the Bette Midler revival of Hello, Dolly! This is a good chance to get a look at a seldom-seen show, one that still looks great on paper: Anastasia ran for more than 800 performances at the Broadhurst Theatre. And it won a Drama Desk award for outstanding projection design, though tech overall is still a somewhat marginal element at the show's current home at Tesseract Theatre. Company co-founder Brittanie Gunn directs this production, which is about 50% Slavic fatalism and 50% every other musical you've ever seen before. Notably, the natural tension arising from that unlikely combination adds another layer of "imposter syndrome" to the whole Disney-sounding show, in its two and a half hour swirl. This production features encyclopedic choreography by Michelle Sauer and the sure-handed music direction of Zach Neumann. The lovely and adaptable set design is by Todd Schaefer. Costume designer Sarah Gene Dowling adds wardrobe that ranges from very nice to unforgettably lovely. And there are great props by Rachel Puleo. Still, notwithstanding a romantic ending and some powerful moments on stage, Anastasia is often thematically grim, even as it's shackled to a contrary and upbeat musical theatre format. Then again, when are you ever going to get another chance to see it on stage? In such a fierce new production? With such a powerful cast? But it's big and loud and in your face, when it should be (like its heroine, Anya, played perfectly by Sarah Wilkinson) a bit smaller and more fragile and wondering. You've got to hand it to them, though: even as physically and psychologically overpowering as nearly the whole cast is, they are also a great human Mixmaster of lithe and lavish movement and intensity, robustly portraying all sorts of displaced, starving, hopeless, or alcohol-ravaged Russians. And then the story brightens considerably in Act Two, finally matching the relentless pizazz of all that showbiz singing and dancing. What did Walter Kerr say about the first production of Fiddler on the Roof? "It might be an altogether charming musical if only the people of Anatevka did not pause every now and then to give their regards to Broadway." Arriving in Paris, the story of Anastasia finally finds its milieu, turning bright and promising after intermission. Anya and her two Svengalis prepare for their biggest challenge, meeting the Grand Duchess, the surviving sister of the last czar. Based on a real-life historical figure who fled the communist revolution in its earliest days, she enjoyed a long life in Paris, passing away in 1960 after repudiating a string of would-be Anastasias herself. If it were all written by Sondheim, the whole musical would probably have been about the aunt. But the younger Ms. Wilkinson paints a rich and intelligent portrait of the show's young title character with her colorful soprano voice. And, as if carving a Galatea out of stone, or turning a poor Cockney flower girl into a duchess, the wonderful local character actor Kent Coffel plays Vlad, perfectly scoundrel-ish as a would-be courtier from the old imperial days of St. Petersburg. Aaron Fischer is excellent as his partner Dmitry, who (like the rest of us) falls in love with the alleged offspring of Czar Nicholas II. Together they try to turn a lost, amnesiac girl into a czarina, and their song together with Ms. Wilkinson, "Learn to Do It," humorously borrows a step or two of the choreography from My Fair Lady's "The Rain in Spain." Mr. Fischer is exemplary, with a long list of songs that he delivers with realism and authenticity. It's successful, overall, but Anastasia doesn't quite become something all its own until the last ten minutes or so, as a beautiful romance finally unfolds. But it changes the context, all this modern can-do Americanism, slapped onto an incident that may have actually taken place, under totally different constellations of meaning, in central Europe generations ago. The commercial idiom is in full effect, though, along with the usual "defying gravity" rising tone of the modern musical songbook. Almost in rebuke of that, Donald Kidd is very fine as Gleb, a thoughtful Bolshevik secret policeman sent to assassinate Anya. He gets no happy songs, to my recollection. But he gives a nuanced and tactical performance that builds to a breathless confrontation in the City of Light. An American would imagine him having happy songs, but that's just something in the water around here. Kimmie Kidd (Mr. Kidd's mother) is outstanding as always as the gatekeeper to the dowager empress (the imposing Margery A. Handy). It would be hard to exceed the quality of the casting overall: Tiélere Cheatem is magical as Nicholas II, and Scott Degitz-Fries is splendid as an expat nobleman, along with such serious, carry-the-show stalwarts as Lindsey Grojean, Stephanie Merritt, Kelvin Urday, and Jacob Schmidt. Ella Drake, an alum of the local Center of Contemporary Arts (COCA) does a lovely job with a ballet solo in act two. So, here in the old French fur-trading outpost of St. Louis, you'll be impressed by a stage full of strong, sharp, dedicated performers, putting a light, bright American spring into the step of all that Russian dour. And if the old Soviet Union had somehow managed to hold on to all these relentless merrymakers, then maybe we'd be the ones with a brutish despot running our country, and they'd be the ones ... oh, never mind. Anastasia, a The Tesseract Theatre Company production, runs through November 24, 2024, at the Marcelle Theatre, 3310 Samuel Shepard Drive, St. Louis MO. For tickets and information, please visit www.tesseracttheatre.com. Cast: Production Staff: |
