By Rebekah Frank

staff writer

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On Nov. 15 students filed into the EWU Theatre to experience opening night of the musical, “The Fantasticks.“

This musical is a romance, but it has a bit of a twist to it. During the first act the narrator introduces himself and sets the stage for the audience. He tells the story of a young girl who lives with her mother and is very naïve about the world.

Her mother is upset with her because she is not growing up the way she expected her to be. She constantly compares her daughter to the vegetables that she grows in her garden, saying that she likes vegetables better because they are dependable, what you grow is what you get, and never anything else.

The narrator continues to introduce the audience to a young boy who lives next door to the girl. He is a bit older but has the same conflicts. His father is also a gardener and complains about the fact that his son is not turning out to be what he thought he planted.

Between the two families, there is a wall. The parents of the boy and girl built that wall to separate their land and their children. They pretend to be in a feud in hopes that their children will fall in love, marry and unite them.

Director of the musical Buddy Todd, really appreciated the difference in this musical from a typical musical where a boy meets a girl. There is turmoil, they overcome the turmoil, fall in love and the end.

“The whole first act we get to experience kind of the typical musical theater experience,” says Todd. “Act 2 basically asks the question, ‘Well, what happens now?’”

In the second act, the children find out that their parents had staged everything about their love story. They then realize that without the drama, secrecy and typical princess and hero story, their love is kind of boring and dull.

The boy decides he wants to discover the world, while the girl decides to fall in love with someone else, and they both decide never to speak to each other again.

“I love that concept. I love that question of what if, and turning things on their head,” said Todd.

The narrator knows what both of the children needed in order for them to grow up and realize what they had, and so he becomes the villain and does just that. He interacts not only with the boy and the girl, but also with the audience.

“I’ve always loved that,” said EWU sophomore Elizabeth Lewis.

With comedy, action and romance, this musical has something everyone can relate to.

Stage manager for this musical, Dylan Blackhorse-von Jess, can relate to theater quite a bit. “The thing about theater is it is very human, … it is a great medium for expressing very raw human feelings that everyone can connect to,” said Blackhorse-von Jess.

The musical had many members of the audience laughing in the first act, and intrigued in the second. “I thought it was great, … hilarious and then trippy,” said Lewis.