Frederick Loewe’s lush, melodic score for “Brigadoon” is so sweepingly romantic that’s it’s tempting to overlook just how shallow the characters are and how terribly dated the story is.
Beyond its undeniably gorgeous music, the 1947 classic (book and lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner) has aged terribly. This is a show with a violent death woven into the plot roughly midway through, only to be largely forgotten as the facile, happily-ever-after-ending sends the romantic leads setting off into the proverbial sunset. The result is a story that’s incomplete and unsatisfying, as well as troubling.
In the Music Theater Works staging running through Nov. 12 at Skokie’s North Shore Center for the Performing Arts, director Sasha Gerritson doesn’t attempt to reinvent the wheel. Her musically sound production is packed with visual flourishes and robust dance numbers, with choreographer Clayton Cross taking her cues from the cinematic sweep that instilled much of the movement in MGM’s 1954 movie version of the musical. The production looks and sounds great.
But under Gerritson’s direction, the mythical tale of “Brigadoon” moves at a glacial pace, eventually limping toward its frustrating ending. The staging is repeatedly encumbered by sluggish blackouts between scene changes, despite the fact that’s it’s essentially a one-set show. They break up the action and ruin any narrative flow.
The plot is centered around best friends and New York sophisticates Tommy Albright (Conor Jordan), a chap with matinee-idol charm, and his comic-sidekick best pal Jeff Douglas (Zachary Linnert). The men are lost somewhere in Scotland at lights up, their failed hunting trip ending in disorienting blasts of mist, the onset of mysterious music and a walk to a strange village they can’t find on any map.
The town is Brigadoon, a place blessed with what the locals call “the miracle.” For magical reasons explained via labored exposition, one night in Brigadoon equals one century in the outside world. For the townsfolk, it’s the mid-18th century, and they are happily isolated from the troubles of the world beyond. There’s a caveat that comes with the miracle: If anyone who lives in Brigadoon ever leaves Brigadoon, everyone in town dies.
Romance ensues as Tommy and local lass Fiona MacLaren (Sarah Obert) fall in love. Complications ensue because back in New York, Tommy is engaged to Jane (Delaney Good), who he neither loves nor respects. Plus, to be with Fiona, Tommy would have to move 200 years into the past.
But the biggest tension in the plot comes from Harry Beaton (Will Leonard), a young man who is miserable living in Brigadoon and desperately wants to leave. Harry’s considerable troubles don’t matter in the end, as the book basically erases them with a giant wedding topper of rosy-hued sentiment.
That said, under Michael McBride’s music direction, the cast and seven-piece live orchestra sound wonderful. Obert’s silvery vibrato belt has power and nuance, making the lilting verses of “Almost Like Being in Love” and “Heather on the Hill” feel almost reverent. Jordan brings a velvety smoothness to the role of Tommy, his soaring vocals becoming both manifesto and a prayer in the yearning love song “There But For You Go I.”
There’s also Madison Kauffman’s saucy Meg Brockie, failing with comic aplomb to seduce Jeff and delivering a rollicking, defiant drinking song in “My Mother’s Wedding Day.”
Also prominent among the townsfolk: Fiona’s sister Jean (Susannah Elizabeth Harvey), who provides one of the production’s visual high points in her willowy, balletic dance solo to “Come to Me, Bend to Me.” The dance accompanies Elizabeth’s fiance Charlie Dalrymple (Luke Nowakowski), who instills the song with beautiful longing.
The comic star here is Linnert’s wise-cracking Jeff, his cynical, practical wit consistently making him the most interesting character on stage.
Costume designer Jazmin Aurora Medina has the women dressed in fairy-like layers of netting and flowers, giving Jean a spectacular wedding dress that looks like clouds. Ann Davis’ capable set is all verdant stone and distant misty mountains, adding to the ethereal look of the production.
But for all the pleasing effects, the characters here mostly fail to intrigue and the show’s biggest conflict isn’t resolved so much as it is dropped. Not even Loewe’s luscious score can fix that.
This is one of those canonical musicals that now works better as a concert, the score unencumbered from paper-thin characters and insufficient story.
