A 'Little Women' in need of music and inspiration
THEATER REVIEW | Right for the season
While "A Christmas Carol" continues to remain a reliable holiday season cash cow (with various takes on "It's a Wonderful Life" close behind in popularity), many theaters are testing alternatives for making the box office sing "Noel."
At Forest Park's Circle Theatre, director-designer Bob Knuth has collaborated with Rani Blair-O'Brien on a new stage adaptation of Louisa May Alcott's "Little Women." This "play with music" (and it contains far too little of the latter) is serviceable but hardly inspired. And watching the production -- which is only on a decent college level -- I kept wondering why Circle, which invariably excels at full-fledged musicals, didn't stage the beautiful 2005 Broadway show that proved a major hit at Marriott Theatre a few seasons back.
In any case, Alcott's story is not only seasonally appropriate, but also bears timely connections to the homefront situations of many military families.
It begins in the winter of 1863-64, as the four March sisters are facing a near-penniless Christmas in their Concord, Mass., home. They are the pretty, ever-proper Meg (a sweet-voiced Laura McClain), the brainy and rebellious Jo (Kieran Welsh-Phillips, who is fresh, energetic and confident and the strongest actress here), the good-hearted but frail Beth (Jill Sesso) and the very young and bratty Amy (the spirited Abigail St. John).
The Civil War is raging. Their father has gone off to war to serve as a chaplain. And their mother, Marmee (Anita Hoffman), is trying to keep the family together as each girl faces crises and life changes.
Jo, who shocks everyone with her frequently uttered epithet "Christopher Columbus!," is the main driving force here, and her determinedly anti-romantic relationship with her well-to-do young neighbor Laurie (the lively Jeremy Myers) is charming. It is Laurie's tutor, the upstanding but poor John Brooke (deftly played by Kevin Anderson), who wins Meg's heart, despite the interference of her lonely, bitter Aunt March (Mary Redmon in high Victorian dudgeon). The show ends before Beth's death and Jo's move to New York.
Knuth's set is pure Victorian American, and Patti Roeder's costumes are an ode to hoop skirt days.
The show's ideal audience is pre-teen girls, and a gaggle of them giggled audibly at just the right moments at the performance I attended.