Happy endings don't always turn out as happily as they're supposed to.
But despite the plans for an outdoor park production going awry because of a rainy weekend, the Arkansas Repertory Theatre's concert version of "The Fantasticks" turned out not just happily, but, well, fantastic.
The one-shot show outdoors Sunday at Murray Park on Little Rock's Rebsamen Park Road turned into two shows inside the theater on Little Rock's Main Street. I don't think the production suffered one whit from the change in venue.
In Act I, supposedly feuding neighbors (Felicia Dinwiddie and Vivian Norman) are actually scheming to bring together their dreamy children -- Matt (William Romain) and Luisa (Hannah Gothard).
Even the ridiculously arranged abduction of the girl, by a professional bandit named El Gallo (Benjamin H. Moore) and his sidekick, a fading actor named Mortimer (Vincent Insalaco) so the boy can heroically rescue her, turns out happily. But by the second act, things start to sour. True love eventually triumphs, but only at the cost of pain and hard experience.
Two-thirds of the six-member cast is local; five-sixths have Arkansas connections (Moore is the lone import). And they were all a delight to watch and listen to. It's particularly good to see Norman, once a Rep veteran but out of the limelight for many years, return both to the stage and to the Rep. Her and Dimwiddie's two comic numbers -- "Never Say No" and "Plant a Radish" -- were among the show's highest points.
The Rep's Will Trice provides some staging for the classic off-Broadway musical (music by Harvey Schmidt, book and lyrics by Tom Jones), enough to require some comic fight choreography, but largely the performers performed with scripts in their hands and with their posteriors on stools. But for some reason, all of them were barefoot.
Music director Michael Rice headed up a fine four-piece band (piano, bass, harp and percussion).