Stirring ‘Candide’ finds hope in spite of dark times
Since its 1956 debut as a Broadway musical, Leonard Bernstein’s “Candide” has traveled to more places — and proven even more adaptable, as it’s gone through seemingly countless versions — than its optimistic protagonist.
But even Candide might have quailed at the prospect of staging this piece — usually presented with a huge orchestra, a chorus and multiple sets tracing Candide’s progress around the globe — with a cast of just eight, accompanied by piano and flute on a stage with no sets and minimal props.
Welcome to that best of all possible worlds known as Third Avenue Playhouse, an 84-seat black box theater in Sturgeon Bay where director James Valcq has once again defied the odds.
Valcq has remade “Candide” as story theater: Drew Brhel’s narrating Voltaire takes us through the novella he wrote, while the ridiculously good singers who surround him make that story come alive.
With the familiar overture playing in the background — Bernstein’s ensuing instrumental interludes are also recorded — the lights come up on Brhel’s plainly dressed Voltaire. Inspired by the music, he opens a chest yielding a trove of costumes; he uses them to dress cast members who gradually emerge on stage and prepare to bring Candide’s world to life.
During the ensuing two hours, they’ll take us on a picaresque journey from Candide’s native Westphalia to Lisbon, Paris, Spain, various places in South America and Venice; along the way, Candide is robbed, hoodwinked and beaten while his beloved Cunegonde — routinely raped and ravaged — becomes a hardened courtesan.
Michael Penick and Kaleigh Rae Gamaché sing this ill-fated pair’s song of innocence and experience, making clear from the start what an odd, seemingly mismatched couple they are.
Penick’s marvelously limpid tenor is as pure as the guileless face of his Candide, whose childlike innocence is stunningly misplaced but also increasingly inspiring; he is a holy fool, of the sort embodied by that man from La Mancha who tilts at windmills while seeing the best in everyone.
While the simple Candide is envisioning life on “a modest little farm,” his young betrothed is already lusting for “luxury and stylish charm.”
In her face and in the impeccably controlled artifice of her coloratura soprano, Gamaché conveys what’s brittle and hard within a woman who is often tough because she has to be.
As Cunegonde and her duenna (a delightful Becky Spice, channeling the Wife of Bath) sing, women in this world don’t have many choices. They learn to “Glitter and Be Gay” — and yes, Gamaché delivers this fiendishly difficult song and emerges intact — because they can’t afford to think much about their lot. Hence Anna Cline’s playful, cheerfully upbeat performance as a put-upon soubrette.
Cunegonde’s many seducers include characters played by Brhel as well as the dynamic, continually morphing duo of Doug Clemons and Matt Frye, both of whom play numerous nasty characters.
Clemons is particularly good embodying those characters whose selfishness turns narcissistically inward; Frye is at his best when inhabiting those characters whose selfishness is aggressively directed outward.
Kelsey Wang rounds out the cast, while also regularly accompanying pianist (and musical director) Adam Baus on flute (at one point, they’re joined by Penick on sax for a klezmer tango).
I admit I occasionally missed hearing full orchestration (as well as songs Valcq cut to straighten the through line and shorten the run time). But I can’t overstate the advantages of watching this story unfold with just these instruments, bravely playing on while surrounded by the dark, in a production where there’s often only a pinprick of light guiding characters forward.
For all the satiric and sometimes goofy fun baked into “Candide,” it’s also urging us to stay the course, cultivating a garden in which we ourselves might grow even when the world around us is choking with weeds.
While it can be extremely funny, this production of “Candide” is pointedly aware of the dark times in which we live. All the more inspiring, then, to be offered this little piece of Eden, from a company that continually dares us to dream. We may never create the best of all possible worlds. But as Candide sings near journey’s end, we can surely make a better one.