`After the Fair,’ in its Midwest premiere at Apple Tree Theatre, arrives as a little surprise package under our Christmas tree.
Premiered last winter in a prize-winning Dallas production, this chamber musical comes here as almost a secret show, with eight years of workshop development behind it but with little advance fanfare. Michael Cole, who wrote the book and lyrics, and Matthew Ward, the composer, have solid professional credits behind them, but they are hardly household names in musical theater.
In performance, however, their musical proves a sturdy, well-crafted and even moving romance, neatly fitted around four players and nicely tuned for a small keyboard orchestra and cello.
The show’s thoughtful, complex romance is based on a story by Thomas Hardy, “The Western Circuit,” which in turn takes its basic plot ingredient from “Cyrano de Bergerac.”
An impressionable, illiterate country maid falls in love with a young lawyer she meets at a local fair. The lawyer, who makes a habit of dallying with young girls on his circuit travels outside London, thinks nothing of the affair. But the innocent maid, eager to continue the relationship, prevails upon her kindly mistress to write love letters to him for her. In so doing, the mistress, stuck in a love-dormant marriage with a stodgy wine merchant, herself becomes enamored of the young man, thus creating a bizarre triangle.
Told mostly in song, with some dialogue, “After the Fair” flows smoothly in its music, reaching a high point in a duet for the two women as they express their love.
Mary Ernster, elegantly dressed by designer Jack Kirkby in 1896 gowns and beautifully expressive with her silken soprano, is perfect as the mistress of the house, a woman awakened by passion. Cory Goodrich also is well cast and in excellent voice as the bosomy, impulsive maid who yearns to be a proper lady for her true love.
The male half of the cast consists of Jonathan Clark, most ardent as the lawyer, and the mutton-chopped David Darlow, a non-singer of the Rex Harrison school of harmony, as the grumpy but eventually endearing husband.
Travis L. Stockley has directed wisely and warmly. In a small package, this is a good thing.
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“After the Fair”
When: Through Jan. 4
Where: Apple Tree Theatre, 595 Elm Pl., Highland Park
Phone: 847-432-4335
