Try to Remember: The Fantasticks

I saw the original show, probably, in the 1960s at the Sullivan Street Theater but am not sure which cast I saw. It was a perfectly nice little show in a tiny theater with a small cast which, no doubt, explains it's astonishing longevity. It would certainly have gotten lost on a large Broadway stage.

Based on Rostand's play "The Romantics", the story seems simplicity itself. Two fathers fake a feud in order to make the boy and girl fall in love which they do. Going along with the words of the overworked (on this DVD) title song, the second act illustrates the sentence "without a hurt the heart is hollow".

The DVD is approximately an hour but seems longer as it tends to go over the same material many times. I am surprised, for example, that the first Matt is barely mentioned except by Rita Gardner his costar. This was Kenneth Nelson, a later victim of the AIDS epidemic. He also played both in the stage and movie versions of "Boys in the Band".

Is this simple homophobia? Richard Chamberlain is certainly mentioned but he may not have come out officially before the release of this DVD. In any case, Mr. Nelson is rather conspicuous by his absence.

One is mostly left with the creators Tom Jones and Harvey Schmidt and their umpteen renditions of "Try to Remember". (I don't think anyone ever did the song better than Jerry Orbach!) There are many comments by other staff and cast members which are often quite informative but I don't think they quite overcome the disk's inadequacies.