By DAVID DUPONT
BG Independent News
The Bolsheviks would have been much better off letting the Russian royal family flee to whatever European relations would take them. The brutal murder of the Romanovs set the tone for the Bolshevik regime and bought them no sympathy at the time, nor historically.
It allowed the Romanovs to retain a certain unearned glow and spawned a myth that doesn’t die. Did the young grand duchess Anastasia manage to survive?
Regardless of the facts, she lives on in the musical that bears her name, fashioned by Broadway royalty, composer Stephen Flaherty, lyricist Lynn Ahrens, and writer Terrence McNally. (This concludes this reviewer’s tryptic of Flaherty-Ahrens work having viewed the Waterville Playshop’s “Seussical” and the Toledo Opera’s “Ragtime” in the past few months. That’s an admirably broad range of work.)
The 3B Productions staging of “Anastasia: The Musical Youth Edition” opens tonight (June 25) at 8 p.m. and continues with shows Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m. with a Sunday matinee at 2:30 p.m. at the Maumee Indoor Theater. Click for tickets.
This production, directed by Joe Barton with musical direction by Kristen Woodard and choreography by Bob Marzola-Hughes, rests on the slender shoulders of Rose Walters who stars in the namesake role.
She inhabits the character of a royal grand duchess buried within the psyche of a street sweeper. Anya suffers from amnesia. She was found on the side of road and has made her way in the world alone except for the specters that haunt her dreams.
Walters’ Anastasia is at once tough yet vulnerable, as the two con men who take her under their wings soon find out.
Dmitry (Matthew Cole) and Vlad (Dylan Haught) hope to monetize the rumor running through Leningrad, formerly St. Petersburg, that Anastasia survived. They plan to train a woman to pretend to be the grand duchess, bring her to her mourning grandmother, the Dowager Empress, in Paris, and collect the reward.
Except, the streetwalkers who show up to apply for the acting job are far from suitable. Then they meet Anya, who as they try to teach her about Anastasia, displays certain surprising sparks of knowledge. Each lesson brings another insight beyond what she’s been told. She actually knows French, for example. Is she the real Anastasia?
Despite her rough exterior, Anastasia has a charm that works even on Gleb (Zachary Gray), the Bolshevik police commander. He’s enchanted enough to let her go. That the grand duchess should still be alive is a cloud over his family. His father was in charge of the soldiers who murdered the Romanovs.
After questioning Anya, he tells her that as “her new friend” she should be “careful,” the adding as an agent of the state he advises her to be “very careful.”
“Anastasia: is panoramic, sweeping from Russia to Paris. We travel from the buzzing streets of Leningrad where people struggle to stay alive however they can, to Paris, where the White Russian royalty have fled and live besotted by nostalgia for the old Russia.
In Paris, the Dowager Empress (Whitney Bechstein) grows less and less hopeful that she will find her beloved granddaughter. “Another day, another imposter,” she sighs to the Countess Lily (Olivia “Via” Bridges), her lone lady in waiting. Lily once had an affair with Vlad back in Russia.
Vlad is a commoner who pretended to be royalty to scam them, including Lily.
As the trio of Anya, Dmitry, and Vlad travel, a romance starts to take root between Anya and Dmitry. Once in Paris they reflect in the duet, “In a Crowd of Thousands”, on the shared memory of a long ago parade when the 10-year-old Dmitry was smitten by the 8-year-old Anastasia, who returned his smile.
This romance is inconvenient. Vlad sings he should have never let them dance.
The score, as one would expect, is stunning, waltz rhythms and melodies are pervasive throughout adding to the emotional tug of the story.
The wistful duet between the Dowager Empress and the young Anastasia (Carina Motisher) grows into a waltz showing the Romanovs in all their glory before it disintegrates as their murder ensues. That tune wafts throughout the show like snowflakes.
Like the story, the score teeters between vigorous tunes that reflect the tumultuous present, such “ A Rumor in St. Petersburg” and more nostalgic numbers.
Gleb expresses his own angst in “The Neva Flows,” where he confronts the dilemma of being true to the revolution, which he clearly believes in, and his attraction Anya.
Anya’s realization of her true identity as Anastasia plays out in songs. Walters makes her solos her own. “In My Dreams,” her character confronts the inchoate memories that are all she has left of her childhood. As Act 1 ends she reflects on how far she has come to return to her past.
All these elements collide during the “Quartet at the Ballet,” featuring ballerinas Kat Cutcher, Kate Drewes, Sophia Gibson, Riley Higgins, and Megan Ledyard.
The choreography and staging manage to fit the hordes, whether of Russian common folk or restless White Russians, onto the modest Maumee Indoor stage. The use of projected backdrops evokes the scene without taking up any space.
This alone will carry the audience away into this fantasy world that lifts us from the reality of the past, and the present, for just a couple hours.
