"The Fantasticks" closes today.
In August 1964, I was about to enter my freshman year of college. I was seventeen, working my first summer job, and wondering if I had made the right choice of major. Well, I hadn’t, but that's another tale. I saw in The Cincinnati Enquirer that “The Threepenny Opera” was in production at the Playhouse in the Park. I had been obsessed with the piece since reading an interview with Lotte Lenya in Theatre Arts magazine and playing to death the Bobby Darin recording of “Mack the Knife.” By 1963, I was playing both the 1954 Off-Broadway recording and the complete Columbia recording with Lenya. I had to see it.
I had made friends with several librarians in the children’s dept. of the Middletown Public Library. We had all made one Cincinnati trip of thirty miles to see the original reserved seat showing of the “West Side Story” film, and we made a date for “The Threepenny Opera.” The production was directed by Word Baker, and an announcement in the program stated that in the following week there would be an unscheduled run of “The Fantasticks.” Word Baker, the Playhouse producer, had directed the original production of the Schmidt-Jones musical, and everyone in the Playhouse cast had appeared in the Off-Broadway run of performances. I knew nothing of the piece, but the enthusiastic review in the Enquirer prompted another trip to Cincinnati.
The Fantasticks was a mind-altering experience, and I so fell in love with the score that at intermission I purchased the cast recording. When I got home around midnight, I rushed to the basement, where I maintained my personal space, played the album, and wept profusely over the show’s wisdom, humor, imagination, and beauty. Today, whenever I see a production or listen to a recording, I am seventeen again, waiting for something wonderful.
