After seeing “Big, the Musical” at Whidbey Island Center for the Arts on Friday night, it reminded me that having a laugh and hearing a song is good for the soul. Especially when it’s your neighbors who are singing and dancing together.
The show, with a book by John Wiedman, music by David Shire and lyrics by Richard Maltby Jr., is playing for two more performances at 7:30 p.m. Friday, Dec. 16 and Saturday, Dec. 17.
It’s directed by Robert Prosch and boasts a cast of 40 community members who showed their mettle on Friday by pulling off what certainly must have been a challenging rehearsal process.
The story, which is based on the popular 1988 movie “Big” starring Tom Hanks, begins with Josh Baskin, played nicely by Liam Henny.
Josh is a typical 12-year-old boy who plays baseball and has just started to discover girls, but his world is rocked upside down overnight after he is granted his wish to be “big” by a carnival novelty machine. When he wakes up the next morning as an adult man, his mother (Kim Wetherell-Dunkley) mistakes him for an intruder and chases him out of the house.
Josh makes his away to Seattle, where he becomes an “idea man” at a toy company and has to reconcile his childish sense of wonder in the adult world of office politics and romance.
With the aid of his best friend Billy, played with amiable assurance and wit by Jameson Cook, Josh must cope with his new adulthood while finding another “Zoltar” machine so that he can wish himself a kid again. And so begins Josh’s wild-goose chase back to his teenaged self.
Tristan A.B. Steel plays the grown-up Josh with a hilarious look of bewilderment plastered on his face through the play. Steel was convincing as someone whose “inner self” was barely 13, and also has a pleasant singing voice, which made big Josh that much more endearing.
Of course, Josh finds himself tangled in the adult world of an office romance. Susan Lawrence is executive of marketing the toy company (“You buy groceries?” Josh asks her), and is played here by Savannah True Randall. Randall is an experienced singer with a lovely voice and some wonderful comic moments involving the innuendoes that naturally present themselves in a script that deals with placing an innocent 13-year-old boy in the throes of big city, modern love and office politics.
Steel and Randall offer one of the best duets of the evening singing “Stars.”
Steel and Jim Carroll, as the toy store owner MacMillan, do a fine job with the foot piano show-stopper made famous in the movie, and Melanie Lowey as Diane, Melinda Mack as Abigail, Ken Stephens as Tom and Anthony Caldwell as Nick sing a funny and well done rendition of “The Real Thing” as Susan’s friends.
The score offers plenty of opportunities for “big” numbers with lots of singing and dancing by the large ensemble, who all sound great together while dancing, not an easy feat. There are also some great moments choreographed by Chelsea Randall for this ensemble, such as the effective military style movement of “Welcome to MacMillan Toys” and the everybody-onstage shenanigans of “Cross the Line.”
The orchestra, too, should be applauded for its skillful interpretation of the score and for doing an excellent job of keeping this show bouncing right along, though the orchestra couldn’t help being slowed by the set transitions.
In fact, this show suffers in general from “transition-itis.” The cast was called upon to roll in and roll out a complicated, and sometimes unnecessary, series of set pieces and props for the many scenes in this play, which added a lot of time to the proceedings. The play clocks in at about three hours, including intermission, which is long by any standard. A few of the songs could have been cut without hurting the storyline, especially those with which some of the actors struggled, and sets could have been simplified in certain scenes.
Although Prosch tried his best to conduct so many bodies onstage at once, some of the crowd scenes suffer from lack of intention; a lack of direction. Who are the people in the background at MacMillan toys and what are their relationships to each other? Are they father, mother, son, daughter, friends, who? And what are they doing? Shopping, browsing, dreaming, testing toys? In acting, it’s not enough to move around and pretend you’re doing something. You have to know why you are there, believe it and follow through with your actions. Specifics help to enrich scenes. Otherwise scenes become peppered with folks moving about without purpose onstage, which, I think, can be distracting to the audience.
Ultimately, although the WICA production of “Big, the Musical” has some glitches, I realized something about the general enjoyment of community musical theater.
Sitting there in the audience, I thought of Woody Allen’s character “Mickey” in his film “Hannah and Her Sisters.” Mickey’s life isn’t going well, but then he stumbles one night into a movie theater and catches the final scene of the Marx Brothers “Duck Soup.” In that moment, he sees Groucho, Harpo, Chico and Zeppo, with a big cast behind them, all onstage singing and dancing, and Mickey admonishes himself for being unhappy. He thinks, “Look at all the people on-screen … you know, they’re real funny … Geez, I should stop ruining my life, searching for answers I’m never gonna get and just enjoy it while it lasts.”
While sitting there watching all those kids and teenagers, young adults and middle-agers, and even some seniors, up on the stage dancing and singing and being funny, I realized it was my community onstage singing their hearts out and that made me smile.
And I just enjoyed it, while it lasted.
Tickets range from $12 to $16 and are available at the WICA ticket office. Call 221-8268 or 800-638-7631, or go to www.WICAonline.com.
Very BIG Toy Drive: New, donated toys will be sent to Holiday House for families in need of gifts for children. Drop off new toys between 10 a.m. and 5 p.m. Monday through Friday, or between 1 and 6 p.m. on Saturday.
