Senior Citizen Actors Play Teenage Lovers in St. Paul THE FANTASTICKS

"It becomes more about the arc of one's life, the choices we make or don't make. If you've got two 20-year-olds singing these songs, it's sweet and lovely and charming. When you have people of this age, it has a resonance way deeper."

That's the intention behind director Ben Krywosz's choice to cast the two teenage lovers in Tom Jones and Harvey Schmidt's classic musical, THE FANTASTICKS, with actors Gary Briggle, age 64, and Wendy Lehr, age 72.

Krywosz, who is artistic director of St. Paul's Nautilus Music-Theater, says the casting idea came about when considering the careers of people who spend their lives on stage.

"I was having a conversation last spring, talking about the artist's life and actors, in particular," he explains to the Twin Cities Pioneer Press. "What happens when you get older? What roles are available? And that tied into a conversation about musical theater as a more stylized art form."

Briggle and Lehr were immediately enthused by the opportunity.

"It became: How far could you push it? If we cast Gary and Wendy as the young lovers, what does that do for the piece?"

Certainly the sight of an older couple playing romantic scenes, even if their characters are decades younger, registers differently to an audience than if they were watching actors in their 20s. The fact that Lehr and Briggle have been real-life partners for decades may not be apparent to viewers, but it would assuredly be a part of the creative process.

"We have had moments in rehearsal where everybody has had to stop and weep a little bit, and then we move on," the director says.

Another non-traditional casting choice made by Krywosz, though one that's more commonly done, is to cast two women in the roles of the lovers' feuding fathers. Sisters Christina Baldwin and Jennifer Baldwin Peden play the roles and the director says the gender-switch spurred more rehearsal conversation than the age-switch.

Off-Broadway theatre was emerging as a major artistic force when THE FANTASTICKS premiered at Greenwich Village's Sullivan Street Playhouse in 1960. The tiny theatre was in the vicinity of Bleecker and Macdougal Streets, a center for coffee houses and beat poetry.

"It was such an avant-garde piece in its time, and so much of what it tries to do is rooted in the Beat Generation," says Krywosz. "But with pieces that were trailblazers at the time of their premieres, that can change over time. They can lose a piece of what made them trailblazing."

Asking audiences to believe that two older lovers are actually decades younger and that two women are fathers seems perfectly in line with the leaps of imagination the musical has encouraged audiences to take right from the start.

"This is a reminder of the simplicity of theater," says Krywosz, "and the power of theater to move us."

THE FANTASTICKS is presented at the Nautilus Music-Theater studio in Lowertown St Paul, 308 Prince St #190. Performances are on April 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19 @ 7:30 and April 9, 16 @ 2:00. Visit nautilusmusictheater.org.

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