By putting on a show namedThe Fantasticks, you’ve already set the expectations rather high.
Add to this the fact that the 1960 quasi-fantasy holds the record as the longest-running musical in history (42 years off Broadway – not to mention the countless revivals scattered about the globe), and you find yourself with significant shoes to fill. For Helen Dallimore, however, this was all part of the appeal: find something uniquely treasured, and develop fresh ways to enchant audiences all over again. The Helpmann Award-winning actress and director talks to us in the lead-up to opening night.
“Rehearsing and directing a show is fairly relentless, especially in the early stage of creating it. Getting it up off the floor, making all of those decisions. Once a lot of it is set, it becomes more about sitting back and letting the actors work while I take notes. I look forward to that time coming,” Dallimore laughs.
“But this is also the fun part as well, as a director. Solving any problems, and on top of that I’m a single mum, so I’ve a four-year-old boy to contend with. When I directed High Society I made the tragic error of taking him along to a matinee that he just wasn’t up for, and about ten minutes in he started making so much noise I had to leave. I felt so terrible. My poor actors!”
Life and art is all about the learning curve, and while it’s safe to assume Dallimore won’t be bringing her son to another matinee anytime soon, her past experiences have been aligning almost perfectly to bring us to The Fantasticks. Having featured as Glinda in the original West End production of Wicked, and Cinderella in Into The Woods, helming an allegorical musical that partly takes place within a fantasy world seems a logical next step. While Dallimore caught the performance bug early, she has learned over time that musical theatre can be a very particular game.
“I wanted to be an opera singer, until I realised I didn’t like a lot of opera. I only liked some of it, but there was going to be a lot of opera I was going to have to sing that I wouldn’t really enjoy. But then I became actively enamoured with Bill Collins’ Golden Years Of Hollywood. It was my dream to get double pneumonia and be stuck in bed for three weeks doing nothing but watch Bill Collins all day! That’s when I fell in love with musicals, I think. All those old movies. But I know a lot of wonderful actors who are creative and highly intelligent, and they say, ‘No, that’s not for me.’ I think you need to have that bug and that personality where you feel you can really stand up and stake a claim in the piece.
“Not long after drama school, I formed a theatre company with some mates, as you do, called Hair Of The Dog. The idea was to create opportunities for ourselves, and we were part of the movement that set up the Old Fitz back in the day. That’s when I got the directing bug. When you’re an actor you’re a cog in the wheel, and it’s a wonderful form of self-expression and release. But it’s very one-eyed, and you never get to see the complete picture. Once you direct, you kind of never look back.”
It is estimated that every year, 250 different productions of The Fantasticks are mounted worldwide. Many of these will of course be high school and amateur musical society versions, which tend to not veer drastically from the original Harvey Schmidt and Tom Jones stylings (no, not that Tom Jones). But given the nature of the show, the scope for tackling such a well-loved creation with fresh and respectful hands is huge. It’s a task that has energised Dallimore and her crew, and the end result will be nothing short of… well, you get the idea.
“I saw so much potential for a directorial vision,” she says. “It wasn’t the sort of show where because it’s set in an almost magical world, you can do almost anything. It was ripe for reimagining. That was the appeal for me, to turn this extraordinary score and wonderful fable into something no-one has ever seen done in the show before. There’s a Broadway version running at the moment, but to my knowledge it hasn’t been done outside of the usual parameters. It’s still performed more or less the same way from when it was first done in 1960.
“I think it’s a beautiful score, just a stunning composition. There’s also the fact that it’s designed for a small theatre, and I think people really love to see musical theatre in an intimate space. It makes for such a change from sitting up in the gods, to be up close and personal with the performers, to see their expressions and the tears in their eyes as they sing. It’s incredibly powerful. It’s also the kind of story that you know, but you don’t know. You see it and think, ‘Oh yes, this is about lost love, about regaining love,’ but it also comes from some long theatre traditions. It has commedia; all sorts of influences that are embedded in this work that I think everyone responds to on a really deep level. It’s really exciting, because people who know the show are going to get a huge surprise, and a happy one, I hope.”
The Fantasticks runsuntil Sunday January 31 atHayes Theatre Co..
