Coup de Theatre

The Fantasticks, which ran off-Broadway over 40 years, has just been revived in New York. It's a delightful show, well worth checking out. (Ben Brantley of The New York Times unwittingly reveals in his review that he had better taste at the age of nine when he liked the musical.)

The production features Tom Jones--not the singer, but the writer-lyricist of the show. He plays the Shakespearan actor, just as he did when the show opened in 1960.

Years ago I did The Fantasticks in community theatre. We performed outdoors in a park. If you've seen the show, you might remember about half an hour into the first act, a trunk is pulled onstage and out of it pop the Shakespearaean actor and the Indian. Well, we didn't have any "offstage" in the park. For that matter, with the sparse set, there was no place to hide the trunk.

So what did we do? We put the trunk right up front where anyone could see it from the start. When the two actors came out, the audience would gasp, then applaud.

How'd we do it? The only way possible. Thirty minutes before the show, the actors would get into the trunk. They had to wait an hour for their entrance. We did cut out the bottom half of the back so they could stick their leg outs, but aside from that, there was no trickery. Sometimes, the simplest effects are the best.