Oakland Tribune Review

Seeing CCCT's 'Meet Me in St. Louis' makes you feel good

By Alice Grace Chalip, CONTRIBUTOR
Article Last Updated: 07/05/2007 02:41:26 AM PDT

FOR A real feel-good show it would be hard to beat the joyful music and sentimental story line of "Meet Me in St. Louis."The fact that this show has about 15 scene changes and 17 characters (in addition to the ensemble) probably explains why it is rarely done. Nevertheless, the Contra Costa Civic Theatre and directors Tammara Plankers and G.A. Klein have taken on the challenge with excellent results. "Meet Me in St. Louis" is one of those rare stage plays that was written and produced after it had been a movie. In 1944 the film version was MGM's great success, rivaled in popularity only by "Gone with the Wind."

The sets deserve special acknowledgement. Designed by Malcolm Rodgers and constructed by no less than 28 volunteers, the stage boasts a lovely 1903 home, both interior and exterior, complete with a winding staircase, a wall telephone and a large, comfortable dining room. Later on, a trolley car is pushed onstage, piloted by the theater's founder, Louis Flynn, who says in a loud and ponderous voice exactly one line. There is no attempt to make the trolley believable or to fit it into the story. "The Trolley Song" is nothing but fun for the ensemble. The show opens with a little girl, Tootie (Emma Thvedt), sitting on her front porch and singing in an unaccompanied little girl voice, "Meet me in St. Louie, Louie." Her simple rendition sets the mood for the rest of this story about the strength of families in "the good old days."

The entire Smith family, including Tootie and her slightly older sister, Agnes (Sophie Gabel-Scheinbaum), are excited about a great fair that is to arrive in their home town in 10 months. The two older girls, Rose (Angel Armeida) and Esther (Liz Caffrey) can hardly find time to daydream about the men they love. When Esther gets a moment alone, we learn through the song "The Boy Next Door" that she has never even met the object of her affection.

Esther asks her mother (Jennifer Stark) how to tell when you're in love. At first Mrs. Smith pleads that she hasn't time to answer, but when Esther insists, she sings "You'll Hear a Bell." Stark has a well-trained voice that is a pleasure to hear. Her high and low notes are beautifully matched, and the song sits nicely in her voice.

A different point of view about love, or, more importantly, getting a man, is described by Katie the cook (Hattie B. Mullaly). This lively woman sings and dances that what the older girls need to do is to give their men "A Touch of the Irish."

Another of the Smith progeny is an almost-grown son, Lon (Chris Lacour), who is amused by his younger sisters. When the family throws a party for the entire neighborhood, he sings and dances about the fun of playing "The Banjo."

Drinking in all the young people's enjoyment is one other family member, Grandpa, played by Robert Love. Love, who is not an old man, nevertheless acts like one, even walking with a near limp. Grandpa is gentle and warm with each of his grandchildren without ever getting in their way.

It is Mr. Smith (Kyle Johnson) who throws a bombshell into the family's fun and dreams. He proudly announces that he has received a promotion, so they are all moving to New York City. He expects excitement but receives, instead, alarm and shock.

His family does not want to be uprooted; everyone is happy in St. Louis. Dad, trying to change their attitude, sings a song which must have been hilarious when it was sung on Broadway. It exudes the wonderfulness of "A Day in New York" (where the people are all warm, friendly and helpful).

Music director Pat King and choreographer Derrick Silva had their hands full with this long show. Composers Hugh Martin and Ralph Blane had added 10 songs to the classics from the movie. Five of them, including, alas, the exciting Halloween song and ballet, were cut for this production. But the heart of the story remains.

The show ends with the entire cast onstage singing "Meet Me in St. Louis" and encouraging everyone to join them. It is a fitting conclusion that leaves the audience in a nostalgic, happy mood.

Berkeley Daily Planet Review

Berkeley Daily Planet
The Theater: Contra Costa Civic Theatre Stages ‘Meet Me in St. Louis’

By Ken Bullock, Special to the Planet (07-06-07)

“Clang, clang, clang went the trolley ...”—which around these parts gets confounded with cable car bells and tourist-ridden summers, just as Meet Me in St. Louis’ other big hit, “Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas,” has led some to think of (or to list) the 1944 Vincente Minelli movie musical as a Christmas film.

But the stage adaptation of the film musical (that rare bird), as it’s staged by Contra Costa Civic Theatre, shows it to be a comic piece of nostalgia for an older, family-oriented America, clearly a mood elevator for World War II audiences. It’s not all “family values,” though, that later, reactionary concoction.

The family is a rather eccentric one, and the pater familias (in a fine portrayal by Kyle Johnson) is a bemused, bewildered, even exasperated one, in his efforts to further his career and fund his family’s whims and own social aspirations by relocating to New York. (When his debutantish elder daughter spurns his plans as being too crass and money-centered, he ripostes her thrust with, "and you spend it!")

The story follows the Smith family through the year of waiting for the International Exposition of 1904 in their hometown. The two oldest girls are also concerned with their beaux—an heir to a family fortune (Drew Fowler as Warren Sheffield) who keeps calling Rose (Angel Almeida), only to be put off, and the Boy Next Door (Chris Geritz as John Truitt) whose baseball practice seems to keep him from recognizing his fervent but carefully practiced, nonchalant admirer (Liz Caffrey as Esther, the Judy Garland role in the movie).

As directed with care and sensitivity by Tammara Plankers (who provides a fine program note) and G. A. Klein, this is a refreshingly ensemble-based community production, with special solo and duet moments rising out of the group interactions. Besides Kyle Johnson and Jennifer Stark (Mrs. Smith), fine singers (whose duet of “Wasn’t It Fun?” is a high point), Hattie B. Mullaly (housekeeper Katie, who also cuts a stepdancing rug on “A Touch of the Irish”) and a small ensemble which appears before the curtain between scenes, most of the singing expresses mainly exuberance, which is the right motor for such a production, especially one centered on family and the ups and downs of young people and children.

But the dance numbers are something else again, in particular, the whole dance party scene in Act One, comprising “Skip To My Lou,” a straw hat vaudeville number (from the same source as a song in T. S. Eliot’s ominous fragment, “Sweeney Agonistes”) “Under The Bamboo Tree,” and “The Banjo”—Derrick Silva’s choreography is engrossing and delightful, making the long scene a progressive production number.

“Under The Bamboo Tree” is performed by Esther and her little sisters, Agnes (Sophie Gabel-Scheinbaum) and Tootie (Emma Thvedt, in the role that won little Margaret O’Brien a special miniature Oscar, the only Academy Award for the film that year). Throughout, the child actors are wonderful, showing an enthusiastic, mischievous quality that certainly fits these little mock-ingenues.

And, as Esther, Liz Caffrey deserves a special notice for the juice she puts into the crucial role, making it better and better, until she brings off a near-perfect rendition of “Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas” to a sleepy, forlorn Tootie, on the verge of the reluctant family’s departure East.

Meet Me in St. Loius is a family show, by a company that declares on the cover of their program, “You Are Our Community--We Are Your Theatre.” But the production values (including Pat King’s musical direction and Malcolm Rodgers’ well thought-out and beautifully painted set design)—as well as a well-managed house and box office (Alex Ray and Holly Winter, respectively)—belie the usual stigma attached to “community theater.”

It’s a reflection on how far Bay Area theater has come, and in what depth it’s arrived, on the level of performance. CCCT—and in particular, Louis Flynn, its founding artistic director, the irascible motorman on the trolley which clang, clang, clangs—deserves to be proud of their capability for mounting such a fine summer show for their audience.