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Regional Reviews: St. Louis Little Miss Sunshine Also see Richard's review of Johnnie Taylor Is Gone
But now the characters in William Finn and James Lapine's Little Miss Sunshine (two hours, with intermission) land somewhere neatly in between: giving us a family who could probably exist only in modern America, including a dad who's a struggling minor league baseball player (as if perhaps he'd never fully grown up), who's also trying to get a book deal for a motivational system he's developed (as if he'd grown up far more than we, ourselves). And a daughter who competes in kiddie beauty pageants, which perhaps amounts to the same thing. I'd say, "where did we go wrong?" as a nation. But, in this show, a lot of persevering and ironic song and dance work wonders as therapy, and a kind of enhanced communication. And also as very reliable entertainment. It's all based on the darkly comic film of the same name from 2006. Three years later it was workshopped into a stage musical, then presented at La Jolla Playhouse in 2011, and two years later opened at Off-Broadway's Second Stage Theatre for a two-month run. The late Mr. Finn wrote the fine character-based music and lyrics, and Mr. Lapine adapted the screenplay by Micheal Arndt. And now the show has popped up delightfully at the Greenfinch Theater and Dive (formerly the Way Out Club). It's warm and funny and a tiny bit creepy and bizarre, in a lively new staging by Fly North Theatricals, under the very able direction (and music directions, and choreography) of Colin Healy, with choreography for Olives pageant dance, by his wife Angela Healy. The onstage family spends a lot of time together in their old minivan. But they roll around on stage, using the entire space, on bright yellow swivel chairs, on a lovely road map from New Mexico west to California painted by Katie Orr. It's a little like an Esther Williams movie set inside a 1978 Volkswagen van, swirling around the desert of their ambitions. But the good thing, for us, is that each of them is sinking in a private sort of quicksand. And the mother, Sheryl–coolly, masterfully played by Eileen Engle–holds them all together with love and discipline as she privately considers divorce. (She's the only one who doesn't get to be a kid.) Zoe Klevorn is excellent as the would-be title character Olive Hoover, light-heartedly going through that tween-age mix of knowing and not knowing. Ken Haller is wickedly real and spontaneous as her sex- and drug-addicted grandfather (the whole thing is more or less PG-rated, plus a couple of "F-bombs"). And then in his final scene as Grandpa Hoover, quietly advising Olive, he's strangely magical. If you happen to live here in St. Louis and know the actor as the genial Dr. Haller, who regularly appears on local TV to answer questions on children's health, you can see that entire persona condensed into just one minute. Later in this show, he's funny and poised as the beauty pageant emcee, and in other roles. Brian McKinley is great as the father–his life is crumbling around him and he seemingly has very little authority over his own modern family. There's a restless, nightmarish quality to his characterization, where life has turned into something completely different from what he'd imagined. It almost seems as if all their freedom had come to them via Jack Kerouac, a darkness to howl into, out on the road, chasing dreams and ambition. Dereis Lambert is authentic and affecting as Uncle Frank, a professor of literature. He has a bizarre reunion with Jeff, the guy who dumped him (provoking Frank's suicide attempt, before curtain-rise) and runs into Jeff again months later, en route to Frank's niece's beauty pageant. Mr. McKinley doubles perfectly as the college-aged mantrap for them both. And Parker Collier is outstanding in a series of roles, Jeff among them, in that comically awful section in a truck stop restroom. I was a bit envious of the young actor Connor Becker, as Dwayne: he has no lines at all to memorize till act two, as the Hoovers' son Dwayne. But then his character breaks a personal vow of silence, having run into his own particular twist of fate. And at that point I became envious of the way he took over the show, howling through his own broken dream. Dwayne wanted to become a fighter pilot, and there are video game projections upstage later, in act two, on the way to Los Angeles (900 miles west of their home in Albuquerque, New Mexico). Little Miss Sunshine makes for a very good modern musical, where bitter character development is relieved by the light comic touch of all its song and dance. The children's beauty pageant is not quite as unsettling as in the original movie, but Zy Beckley, Brynja Murphy, and Callum Thompson are lots of fun and very professional as the other kids on this particular stage. We also see them earlier, taunting Olive over her own ambitions. The fine costumes and props are by Kel Rohlf. And I guess I always think things should be darker, emotionally. Then again, I am half-Scandinavian. Still, for as smooth and proficient as it absolutely is, it's probably every bit as unsettling as it needs to be, as one 21st century American family rises to face their many challenges all at once, but together. Little Miss Sunshine, a production of Fly North Theatricals, runs through May 4, 2025, at the Greenfinch Theater and Dive, 2525 South Jefferson Avenue, St. Louis MO. For tickets and information, please visit www.flynorth.org. Cast, in order of appearance: * Denotes FNT Student Fly North Theatricals Band Production Credits: |
