aathefantasticks

__The Fantasticks__

A major character is who the play is centralized around. The main character does not necessarily have to say the most lines in a play. For example in the play //Waiting for Godot// by Samuel Beckett, the main character Godot does not have any lines and never appears, but his omnipresent presence is felt through the dialogue of characters who are present on the stage throughout the entire play. In a typical play (not an absurdist play like //Waiting for// Godot) major characters usually undergo a transformation, whether it from immaturity to maturity or a fall from power via a tragic flaw, they must change. They are dynamic characters whose journey through change is what comprises the main action. Minor characters are usually characters that help to facilitate this change. They can take many forms, enemy, friend, or mentor. They are generally static characters who do not experience any change. While being called //minor// characters, these characters are essential to the progression of the play. The main characters need the main characters to spur them onto the action and meat of the play. In //The Fantasticks//, the main characters are Luisa and Matt. They endure major changes and obstacles throughout the duration of the play. The minor characters are El Gallo, Hucklebee, Bellomy, the Mute, Henry, and Mortimer. El Gallo is incredibly essential to the musical and helps both Matt and Luisa to progress in their maturity and understanding of the world, but does progress himself as a character. He is stagnant as the benign trickster, who employs his wiles in order to hurt, but essentially enable both Matt and Luisa to grow up. Hucklebee, Bellomy, the Mute, Henry, and Mortimer, all play significantly smaller roles than Luisa, Matt, and El Gallo, but they are central in moving the action along in Matt and Louisa’s journey towards maturity and love.
 * 1. **** What is the difference between a major and a minor character? Who are the major and minor characters?  **

My favorite character is El Gallo because his role is so layered. On the surface he appears to be an evil villain, but he actually possesses good intentions beneath his scoundrel façade. He also brings to light how immature and naively idealistic Luisa and Matt are in the beginning of the musical. I enjoyed seeing him put Luisa and Matt through the trials of ‘real life’, so that the character were not quite so saccharinely sweet and delusional. El Gallo to me represents the obstacles we must face in life to learn. He personifies the struggles, heart aches, and tribulations everyone must endure in order to learn and truly value what they have in their lives. I thought the actor playing Henry portrayed his character the best. He emoted what is at the core of the character Henry, the want of attention and love of theatrics. He infused a comedic, animated, rowdy persona into his character and easily commanded the attention of the audience. I found myself looking to see his reactions over many of the other characters when he was present in a scene. He brought a lightheartedness and comedy when it was needed to lighten the overall mood of the play.
 * 2. **** Who is your favorite character and why? Who is the person you consider to have played their part the best?  **

I sympathized the most with Matt. I found his plight to be a common one of many young people now. We all leave home, go to college and are filled with idealistic thoughts and plans (which are not necessarily bad, they are just not in concordance with how harsh real life can be), and then are sent out into the real world where we find that everything is not exactly as we expected it to be. Often people believe they will have an easy road of success and that most people are trustworthy and will help us to excel, but learn that the journey of life is paved with stumbling blocks that allow us to grow and learn and it is often the scenarios in which we feel our lowest that our biggest and most essential change and development occur.
 * 3. **** With which character did you sympathize most and why?  **

I saw some of myself in the fathers, Bellomy and Hucklebee. I also have a propensity for trying to shape the way my friends lives go through indirect ways. I often want what I think is best for them, but know that they generally do not accept direct advice or someone trying to direct the journey of their life, so I employ methods that often go undetected, but do subliminally lead them to the scenario I believe is best for them. I do not try to do this often as //The Fantasticks// vividly portrays through the fathers, it does not help to underhandedly contrive your own solutions to others’ lives. Generally life will carry people where they should go and meddling only sidetracks them from their true destination.
 * 4. **** Did you recognize anything that reminded you of yourself in any of the characters?  **

Matt and Louisa begin the play as very idealistic, naïve young people. Louisa has very ingrained, yet unattainable ideas as to what a man and love should entail. She believes that love needs to be a grand adventure, that the man that she loves must be able to excite and enthrall her. She cares very little about stability and longevity. Louisa is almost manic in the first half of the play concerning love. She follows it around like a wild banshee, feigning for crazy escapade and a man who possesses stereotypical features such as unwavering bravery, brawn, and a sense of exhilaration. She soon realizes these features are not all they are cracked up to be when she goes through the dream sequence with El Gallo and sees how tiring this lifestyle is. Matt is a hopeless romantic, but does not know how to truly deal with a woman. He is grasping at what he thinks a man is. He also believes that the world is essentially a massive play pen, for exploration, success, women, and money. He finds that when he leaves his home to find his own way in the real world, but comes to find that the real world is a harsh place where people are always wearing masks and you never know their true intentions. They both learn through El Gallo and his band of performers (Henry and Mortimer) that life is not easy and that love cannot be idealized and held to lofty standards that cannot be reached. This transformation to maturity is marked by the use of puppets. In the beginning the use of puppets underscores their innocence, naivety and immaturity. Once the puppets disappeared, Luisa and Matt had undergone their “coming of age” transformation. Once they are no longer puppet, they are no longer controlled by the wants and ploys of the other characters; they are just truly in love. There seemed to be a parallel to Romeo and Juliet constantly running throughout the play, seeming to signify that in the beginning Luisa and Matt were immature and had no idea as to the gravity of love and their actions, but by the end they moved past this immaturity and came to realize that stability, longevity and reliability are essential in life and are a better foundation for love than romanticized ideals such as adventure and excitement.
 * 5. **** How do the boy, Matt, and the girl, Luisa, change by the time the play ends?  **

I think it is meant to show the differing ideas of how El Gallo and Louisa view their “burgeoning” relationship. El Gallo knows the entire time he is going to leave Luisa and is just trying to teach her a lesson about love, all while swindling her out of her mother’s necklace. Luisa naively believes that they are going to go on many wild adventures together and have a long-lasting love. He will remember the kiss because it is an ephemeral moment that is passing, he is stealing her love, necklace, and innocence, not all in the name of villainy, but also in part to teach Luisa about the importance and gravity of love. Edward McCreary vividly portrays El Gallo’s crafty, underhanded, deceptive, sneaky nature, but he also allows room for his underlying emotions to come through so as to allow the audience to grasp El Gallo’s true intentions of teaching Luisa and Matt about the realities of life and love. He plays his role as a puppeteer effectively by typically being higher than the other actors, portraying how he is manipulating the characters. The use of the puppets all together is a good metaphor for how El Gallo is controlling all the situations and circumstances in order to teach lessons. He also sets up each main character to learn a life lesson. He proves that being a man is more than bravery and wielding a sword and that life is difficult and a struggle to Matt and that love is not something to be overly romanticized and that you cannot hold other people to unattainable standards to Louisa. Edward McCreary effused the ‘bad-boy’ confident, adventurous persona that makes it understandable and believable that all the characters in the play would succumb to his manipulation.
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">6. **** <span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">What does El Gallo mean when he says, "he'll remember the girl's kiss"? How does he play his character?  **

<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">The fathers differ from each other in the way that they garden and raise their children (they are essentially one in the same). In the beginning of the play we are introduced to the fathers’ gardening techniques. Bellomy believes it is best to water plants unduly and provide all they need. Hucklebee takes a very different approach, he believes that plants need constant pruning and do not need more than the bare minimum that is required for growth. These opposing gardening techniques portray the way that these two fathers parent. Bellomy provides everything that Louisa can need, much like over watering his plants, which in turn makes her incredibly confident, but excessively demanding. Hucklebee’s more restrained parenting style, like pruning, puts limits and regulations upon Matt, which makes him slightly more reserved, but also more giving and understanding. The fathers resemble the parents in //Romeo and Juliet// who are feuding and forbid their children from seeing each other. They also are similar to the parents in //Parent Trap// who initially keep their children apart because of their feud, but come together because of their children’s newly found connection and emotional ties, the parents then similarly go through a period of turmoil and separate the children again, and finally the families are united in the end because the children have strong emotional bonds. The fathers effectively play their roles because they allow for the comedy to shine through their performances, but also put enough importance and gravity on the gardening scenes so the audience can be clued into the connection between gardening and parenting styles.
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">7. **** <span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">How are the fathers different from one another? What other characters in film or TV do they resemble?  ** ** <span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">How do they play their roles?  **

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Henry and Mortimer expertly divide their acting skills between comedy and informational. They allow for comedic relief at many times, but also reference the strong ties throughout //<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">The Fantasticks //<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">to Shakespeare’s //<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Romeo and Juliet //<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">, and just general ties to Shakespeare. They also accompany Matt on his journey through the real world and expose to a number of horrible violent, abusive situations, helping to teach Matt that the real world is not just a playground for adventure. They have probably ended up together as they are a slightly rag-tag, unsuccessful acting duo. It is obvious that they have talent, but the theater world has left them both behind so they have joined together in order to survive. Henry is extremely <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">extroverted <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;"> loud, emotive and dominant over Mortimer. Mortimer is mute, and generally plays simple, almost barbaric characters that do not involve a high level of cognition or skill to portray. They most likely have a relationship of Henry caring for Mortimer, and in general explaining Mortimer to the outside world, but Henry also needs Mortimer to counterbalance his excessive personality, so they have become an inseparable duo.
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">8. **** <span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Discuss Henry and Mortimer as characters. What is their function beyond comic relief? Compare their theatrical histories and comment on the fact that they have ended up as a pair.  **