BWW Reviews: A Well Worn Tale - LITTLE WOMEN
By: Amanda Finn Mar. 01, 2015
"...the plot revolves around the lives of the four March daughters - Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy - and follows their triumphs and tragedies as they grow up, fall in love, and face life."
Per the playbill comes a simple, but altogether truthful, analysis of the lengthy goings on of Louisa May Alcott's classic novel Little Women. In playwright Thomas Hischak's stage adaptation, Alcott's timeless work remains as close to the original text as one could hope. In this particular version, however, Jo takes on the role of narrator which provides an entirely new dynamic to a work that many know quite well.
Edgewood College has taken on this nearly three hour endeavor for their spring production. Headed by director Susan Nanning-Sorenson, the hearty cast dove headfirst into Hischak's reformatted work.
What drives this show is the spunky Miranda Beadle as young Jo. Part of what makes Little Women so endearing is being able to observe the growing of the young girls into mature adults. Beadle's seamless transition from rowdy tomboy to cultured writer is superb. She flows so well through the spectrum of the show that one could miss the different fragments of young Jo's life - the moments that fundamentally change her. Beadle is precisely what I imagined Jo would be like when I first read Alcott's novel.
Leigha Sander too, as youngest daughter Amy, tackles her character's maturation with all the grace one should expect from Amy March. Despite her growth into a young woman, Sander is able to hold onto Amy's prim innocence that casts a spell onto the audience in the first few scenes. Nothing was more charming in this show than Amy's meticulous want to save some of her Christmas money for pencils and hair bows.
This twenty one member cast encapsulates the spirit of Little Women; particularly the women who had to manage the ordeal of hoop skirts - bravo. Hoop skirts are a beast in their own right.
Mary Waldhart and her team deserve a great deal of praise for the costume design and work done for this show. Civil War eras garments, for the wealthy or otherwise, are extravagant. Not only did they have to fit clothing to twenty one different people, but several of those individuals had more than one costume as well.
Luckily no one had a ten second quick change. Ladies' dresses from that time period are not forgiving for actresses who have a fleeting moment to disappear and reappear on stage.
While every other aspect of the show was like honey, the drawback to this particular performance was the background music. At times it would fade out beautifully and not distract from the performers - but most of the time it abruptly cut out. This divided the smooth shift from scene change to the next scene.
Anyone attempting to put on a show over the average two hour show has to worry about the performance dragging on. For Edgewood College's production of Little Women, this is the least of their worries. Every triumph is glorious while every tragedy is harrowing.
Christopher Columbus! It's a family's legacy wrapped in a blue satin bow.
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