Do you sometimes sneak a peek at him or her and wonder why you’re still together?
Here’s a heads up.
See Shoreline Community College’s “Brigadoon.” The almost all-student cast will remind you.
Fairy tale magic and hardheaded skepticism frame this classical circa 1950 Lerner and Lowe musical about young love in an unchanging village that appears on a misty moor in Scotland but once every hundred years — and then for only 24 hours. But the trick to it is making it believable.
Music director and producer Susan Dolacky’s backup helps.
Director Ann Arends’s know-how translates.
Orchestra conductor Teresa Metzger Howe inspires.
However, student Katherine Krueger’s soprano practically picks you up and takes you to the place where anything is possible. As Fiona, a village girl of Brigadoon, her high notes are pure rapture. Look out, Seattle Opera. Katherine Krueger is coming.
As the Doubting Thomas New Yorker Tommy Albright, Eric Damien Forsythe’s tenor doesn’t completely counterpoint Krueger’s soprano. But for sheer sincerity, his take on “There But For You Go I” makes you stop, look and listen.
Also, Krueger and Forsythe’s “Heather on the Hill” and “Almost Like Being in Love” are duets that do up the show’s youthful romance with storybook innocence.
Kelsey McDonald’s man-crazy Meg tosses in the comedy of “The Love of My Life” when she throws herself at the not-interested New Yorker cynic Jeff Douglas. “Love of My Life” is Lerner’s recount of Meg’s many, many rolls in the Village hay.
Adrienne Perry as Jean introduces the bride-to-be as brides should be in Brigadoon; which is to say, sweet and simple.
Nate McVicker’s “Come to Me, Bend to Me” is as touching a lover’s call to his beloved as I have ever heard.
Guest actor Rick Hay adds the weight of authority as Mr. Lundie, the schoolmaster who explains the legend of Brigadoon.
High drama pulses throughout “The Chase” after Mike Calivo as Harry, the suitor by love rejected, gone mad and fleeing Brigadoon.
Pomp and circumstance dignify a wedding ceremony’s entrance of the clans. The agility and foot speed of the Highlanders Sword Dance excite and amaze. Tartan plaids, pattern kilts, skirts, sashes and shawls paint the landscape with rich color. Sporrans, or the pouches Highlanders wear at the front of the kilt, and ghillies, or shoes with thick soles for schlepping through heavy mud, authenticate village life in 18th-century Brigadoon.
No effort’s been spared to bring Scotland to SCC’s Campus Theater and Lerner and Lowe’s “Brigadoon” to Scotland.
So why not take the test?
Bring him or her to “Brigadoon,” and ask yourself afterwards why you’re still together. I went by myself, but I did pause to ask myself later, after sneaking a peek at her when I got home.
The answer wasn’t surprising. We live in “Brigadoon.”
Reactions? Comments? E-mail Dale Burrows at grayghost7@comcast.net.
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