The Fantasticks: The world's longest-running musical comes to Sonoma

'All I knew about 'The Fantasticks,' when I was asked to maybe direct it, was that it had run forever on Broadway, that it supposedly had really great songs, and that a lot of people I know absolutely loved it,' says Trevor Hoffman, who is indeed directing Sonoma Arts Live's upcoming production of the classic musical by Tom Jones and Harvey Schmidt.

'So I said yes,' says Hoffman, who recently won the Stage One Theater Arts award for co-directing Sonoma Arts Live's 2016 production of Stephen Sondheim's 'Assassins,' which also took the award for Best Overall Production. 'Just based on what I knew about it, that it was a story of a family and young couple in love, that appealed to me.

''Assassins' was so dark and heavy and edgy, I was ready to do something that would cleanse my palette.'

Then he read the play. Instantly, Hoffman realized he'd just taken on more than just a much-beloved 56-year-old classic.

'The Fantasticks,' for a number of very different reasons, also represents one of the trickiest challenges in modern American musical theater, all because of one very-loaded word, in one very pivotal song.

We'll get back to that.

Very loosely adapted from 'Les Romanesques' ('The Romancers'), an allegorical fable by Edmond Rostond – best known for 'Cyrano De Bergerac' – 'The Fantasticks' begins as a gentle tale of two fathers, longtime best friends and next-door neighbors, who launch a plot to cause their children to fall in love. The scheme involves building a wall to separate the houses, and forbidding the young man and woman from speaking. Trusting that children will always disobey their parents, the fathers then wait for the kids to defy them, fall in love, and live happily ever after. But things soon go wrong, and the story, 'narrated' by a mysterious actor known as El Gallo, becomes something richer and sadder and wiser, and everyone learns a lesson or two about disappointments of life and love, and the necessity of kindness and hope in a chaotic world.

'We have a great cast,' says Hoffman, 'some of whom were in 'Assassins,' Tim Setzer and Ryan Whitlock. I've got the same musical director, Sherrill Peterson. So that feels very familiar.'

Hoffman says he's enjoyed meeting the complex staging demands of the show, which are daunting to many directors. One major character, for example, called The Mute, communicates often, but without ever speaking.

'There are many different ways of doing a show like this,' Hoffman says. 'We're using a permeable fourth wall, which in this case is more like a bead curtain than a wall. We're encouraging audiences to express whatever they need to during the show – to sigh, to laugh, to cry, to gasp. They definitely will have permission to do more than just sit in the dark and watch the show.'

Which brings us to the play's most significant challenge.

As written, the first act of 'The Fantasticks' contains a number known as 'The Rape Ballet,' in which El Gallo is hired by the fathers to kidnap the young girl, in hopes that the young man will attempt to rescue her, and win her uncertain heart. The script attempts to explain that in its original context, 'rape' merely meant 'to seize.' In 'It Depends on What You Pay,' the song that precedes the scene, the emotionally-loaded word is used to supposedly comic effect ('You can get the rape emphatic/You can get the rape polite/You can get the rape with Indians/A very charming sight').

'When I read the original version of the script, and came to that scene,' admits Hoffman, 'I thought, 'What have I gotten myself into?' The whole idea of a happy little song in which every third word is 'rape' really scared me.'

There is, it turns out, another version of the song, accompanied by officially sanctioned script changes that leave the word out entirely. While recognizing that some might call it pandering to 'political correctness,' Hoffman has decided to use that version for the Sonoma Arts Live production.

'I personally don't ever think there was a time when it was OK to make light of a word that, for some women, represents one of the worst moments of their lives,' he says. 'But it definitely isn't OK today, in 2016.'

Hoffman's ultimate view on the subject is that, since 'The Fantasticks' is largely about the need for people to change and grow and find wisdom over time, it is appropriate that 'The Fantasticks' itself changes with the times.

'I'll tell you one really great thing about directing 'The Fantasticks,'' Hoffman goes on. 'It's not as much of a stretch to identify with the characters as 'Assassins' was. Here we have this friendly group of people, telling a story of romance and heartbreak and the passage of time. It's got symbolism that everyone can draw something from. We can all see our own lives in it.'

Hoffman certainly sees parallels to his own life.

Asked what his favorite song in the show is, he skips over favorites like 'Try to Remember' – probably the show's most famous song – and novelty tunes like 'Plant a Radish' and 'Never Say No (aka 'Why Did the Kids Put Beans in Their Ears'), and instead names 'They Were You,' the achingly sweet love song sung as a duet between the two time-altered lovers near the end of the show. ('Without you near me/I can't see/When you're near me/Wonderful things come to be/Everything I dared for both you and me/All my wildest dreams/Multiplied by two/They were you').

'I saw 'The Fantasticks' in New York, in March,' Hoffman says. 'I went with my girlfriend, who I planned to propose to while in New York. I kept looking for the right moment, and then, as we were sitting there watching these two people sing this beautiful song to each other, I realized, there would be no better time than right now.'

For the record, Hoffman waited until after the show to propose.

Adds Hoffman: 'She said yes.'

Learn all you need to know about the long-running musical below:

Email david.templeton@sonomanews.com.