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Anne II needs to travel
July 28th- Richard Ouzounian, The Toronto Star
Playwright James M. Barrie once described the importance of charm to a woman: "If you have it, you don't need to have anything else; and if you don't have it, it doesn't much matter what else you have."
He could have also been speaking about musicals, especially ones like Anne & Gilbert, which is enjoying a successful run at the Harbourfront Jubilee Theatre on Prince Edward Island.
This is a show with charm in abundance and that quality helps it glide by some imperfections to emerge as a property deserving of a life beyond the confines of this island where Lucy Maud Montgomery is practically the patron saint.
If you haven't guessed by the title, Anne & Gilbert is a sequel to the evergreen classic Anne of Green Gables and is based on the next two books in Montgomery's series: Anne of Avonlea and Anne of the Island.
It picks up where the first show ended, with the feisty redheaded orphan teaching school in Avonlea, wishing she could go "away" to college and suffering through her on again-off again romance with the handsome Gilbert Blythe.
It's taken nearly a decade for this musical's three authors to get their show onto the stage and once again Toronto writers had to leave town to get their work produced.
Nancy White, the well-known satirical songstress, collaborated on the score with Bob Johnston, who teaches music at Wexford School of the Arts in Scarborough. New Yorker Jeff Hochhauser joined them to write the book and assist on the lyrics.
What they've done keeps the essential tone of Montgomery's work without seeming like a fusty museum piece. The music has real melodic grace and invention, often veering off into unexpected harmonies and rhythms that lift it above conventional musical-theatre fare.
The lyrics are well-crafted, serious when called for (Anne's moving final song, "Forever in My Life") but often wryly amusing, as in the hymn to the eccentricities of P.E.I. residents, "You're Island Through and Through."
And Hochhauser's book, while suffering a bit from the compression mania that befalls anyone who tries to put novels onstage, still creates at least a dozen arresting characters who hold our interest throughout.
The production now playing in Summerside is solid enough to show the work's quality, but there are ways it could be better.
Duncan McIntosh's staging lacks the visual flair of this director's best work, while his choreography is often anachronistic and simplistic to a fault.
Although he's encouraged CanStage regular Phillip Clarkson to design more than 100 scrumptious costumes, the scenery by John Dinning remains blandly beige.
For a show set largely in a location where the sky is such an important part of the emotional and visual landscape, Dinning and McIntosh's decision to keep us inside a solid wooden box all night seems odd and gives Elizabeth Asselstine few opportunities to provide striking lighting.
The cast also varies in quality. Peter Deiwick is a wonderful Gilbert, cocky yet compassionate, warm as a summer rainfall and good-looking enough to melt the hearts of every girl onstage. Mélanie LeBlanc's Anne is more problematic. She sings beautifully but speaks with a pronounced Acadian accent that plays against the verbal dexterity essential to Anne Shirley, meaning the show lacks a certain spark at its core.
There's fine work from Laura Smith as a compassionate Marilla, Pam Stevenson as a droll Mrs. Lynde, Heidi Ford as a vixenish Josie Pye, Sarah Sheps as an ebullient Diana Barry and Natalie Sullivan as a flirtatious Philippa. But several of the other roles are played with a lack of experience or commitment.
In the end, the strength of the writing and the joy of the experience make this one a winner.
It filled a 150-seat theatre last summer and is doing the same at a 400-seat venue this year. The next step is one that many Islanders simultaneously desire, yet dread: it's time for Anne & Gilbert to visit the mainland.
I like to think they'd receive an enthusiastic welcome here.
