Cool Stuff

My Stuff

Little Women

Fox Theatre Broadway Series

Back to the index

OK, True Confessions time: I have neither read Louisa May Alcott's Little Women nor seen any of the several film adaptations of it. In “the dim, dark days beyond recall”, while my female contemporaries were absorbed by the adventures of the March Girls, I was absorbed by the adventures of the Hardy Boys. It's one of those Mars/Venus things.

I point this out not to take anything away from a novel that has inspired six generations of women, but simply to explain why I'm in no position to comment on how closely Allan Knee's book for Little Women - the Musical follows Little Women - the Book. I can say that my friend Maud, who accompanied me on opening night and who has read the novel, felt that the stage adaptation was true to the spirit if not always the letter of the literary original. Given the vast differences between the written word and the sung lyric, that's probably the most one can expect.

In any case, coming to Little Women as a kind of tabula rasa and viewing it strictly as a piece of musical theatre, I found myself impressed, charmed and even touched. In an era of big-budget, theme-park shows, Little Women is surprisingly - well - little. With a cast of only 15 - no more than half of whom are on stage at any one time - and no chorus, Little Women is essentially a chamber musical. The amiable and extraordinarily well-crafted score by Jason Howland and Mindi Dickstein is filled with solos, duets, and trios rather than production numbers. The massive gilt frame that surrounds Derek McLane's set emphasizes its picture-book look. Even the central tragedy of the story - Beth's demise from scarlet fever - is dealt with in miniature in the touching duet “Some Things Are Meant to Be”, with the flight of a kite standing in for the flight of a soul. A deathbed scene might have been more melodramatic but it would also have been less effective.

The modest scale of the show might have been a factor in its relatively short run on Broadway, where it lasted for just under five months (January 25th through May 22nd, 2005). The Broadway musical business has become a high-stakes crapshoot these days, and any show that isn't big, bizarre or both hasn't much chance of surviving for long. Given Little Women's cameo-scale virtues, it's probably a wonder that it got to the Great White Way (or maybe it should be the Great Green Way, given current production costs and ticket prices) at all.

The cast for this tour of Little Women is a fine one, headed by Kate Fisher as the strong-willed ur-Feminist, Jo; she nicely captures the character's awkward feistiness as well as her growing maturity. Renée Brna and Autumn Hurlbert are very effective as the maternal Meg and doomed Beth, respectively, and Gwen Hollander neatly manages the trick of changing Amy from petulant child to self-assured adult in the course of the evening. She even seems larger by the show's end - a tribute to both here acting ability and the shrewd decisions of costume designer Catherine Zuber.

Maureen McGovern created the role of mother Marmee on Broadway and would have played it here on opening night had an unexpected illness not forced her to cede the part to her understudy, Neva Rae Powers. Happily Powers is warm and winning in the part, with a voice that's more than up to the challenges of songs like the elegiac “Here Alone” (which asks a lot in terms of breath control, among other things) or the more dramatic “Days of Plenty” at the show's emotional center. Rounding out the principal females, Louisa Flaningam shows a nice comic touch as the autocratic Aunt March and the busybody landlady Mrs. Kirk.

This being Little Women, the male characters are inevitably secondary, even if the actors playing them are not. Kevin Duda and Andrew Varela nicely capture the awkwardness and charm of Laurie and Professor Bhaer, respectively, and Robert Stattel reprises his Broadway role of the gruff-but-decent Mr. Laurence with great success. Michael Minarik rounds out the fine supporting cast as Mr. Brooke, who wins the home-loving heart of Meg.

For me, then, two hours and forty-five minutes with the March sisters was time well spent. For many members of the opening night audience, however, it apparently wasn't; the applause was often as restrained as the material. Your mileage may vary, but if your family group includes its own “little women”, you should seriously consider a trip to the Fox before the show closes on March 5th. Call 314-534-1111 for ticket information. I think you'll find Little Women to be an original and rather refreshing evening of musical theatre.

But, hey - I'm from Mars, so what do I know?

Back to the index