BRIGADOON

The packed assemblage on Opening Night of the classic musical, Brigadoon, at the Pasadena Playhouse, was the absolutely most appreciative audience ever! It was wonderful to be a tiny part of it. And it was great to see that the crowd wasn’t made-up of only people who one might expect to enjoy a show from 1947—we were very diverse in terms of age and career. I personally knew guests who were over forty years apart in age, including actors, singers, lawyers, teachers, accountants, etc. It was the most fun pre-show mingling.

It did surprise me a bit that there were sooooo many people who appeared to be fans of the old school Lerner and Lowe musical. I’ve referenced Brigadoon in at least a handful of previous columns, (as I sometimes do in life,) and I felt like I was the only person who had ever even heard of the show before! And, actually, even though I had seen just about every classic musical by the time I was eight, (mostly in summer productions, and thanks to my very cultured New York parents,) I had seen only the Gene Kelly and Cyd Charisse film version of this one.

But I guess the Pasadena Playhouse crowd is a classy one because absolutely everyone was into it, as well they should be. I usually feel alone in my love of old musicals; it often seems to me that the Hamilton and Hell’s Kitchen crowds have sort-of shunned that era of Broadway shows. They are dated, but classics still. So everything about Opening Night made me happy, (including getting to finally try Pie ’N Burger food, courtesy of their truck, with lovely personnel, on-site at the afterparty!)

For those of you who know nothing about Brigadoon, (and prefer that I do all the research for you,) the title is the name of a mysterious village in Scotland. And the kicker is that…it appears for just one day every hundred years! (I know.) The logistics of that situation have hurt my brain my entire life, wondering how the inhabitants get food, meds, etc. But I’ve got to let it go because it’s a fictional tale. And, actually, the residents go to sleep after one long day, and when they wake-up, it’s just another day to them. They’re not allowed to interact with the outside world, (think of M. Night Shyamalan’s The Village a bit,) so they have no concept of a century having passed. (They know that it did because of some deal that an elder had made back in the day—my friend Nina and I missed the explanation because the person behind us was heavily coughing on us through that entire monologue, and we didn’t have masks! So our minds were elsewhere right then.) And then two guys from New York happen upon Brigadoon on that one day, and one falls in love with a woman from this village. And most of the action plays out in just that one day!

The fantasy scenario is secondary to the lovely music, though. Brigadoon features songs with which many people may be familiar, even without realizing from whence they came, especially Heather on the Hill and Almost Like Being in Love. I can’t believe how many lyrics I still know. So how many times did my parents play that album when I was growing up?

Caring more about dance than any other art, I have to first laud the two fabulous individual dances in the show. The director, Katie Spelman, also did all the excellent choreography. Broadway’s original choreographer, the late great Agnes DeMille, (who received a big credit in the program,) would be proud of her.

I was so happy to see Kylie Victoria Edwards’ very balletic “love” number in the first act, (in the middle of the song Come To Me, Bend To Me.) It’s beautiful. And then Jessica Lee Keller’s uber-powerful “grief dance” in Act II is a stunner. Nina was so taken with the latter that I’m sharing her feelings about it: “One of the most impactful moments was a dance performed by a character described as being so consumed by grief over the death of her family that she had stopped speaking.Through extraordinary, innovative contemporary ballet—while releasing the most guttural, heartbreaking wail—she expressed what words could not. Tears streamed down my face. Grief is so close to the surface, and to see it danced through music was truly spectacular.” Yeah, what she said. I think most of the audience felt the same way.

As to the music, it was lovely to hear all these aforementioned songs, which I’ve been enjoying since I was a little kid, sung so beautifully. And major props to the wonderful musicians, whose full sound was a joy. At the curtain call, the orchestra was revealed to be on the back of the stage, and they received thunderous applause. It was also interesting that at times, musicians playing flute, violin, cello, and some form of drum, were front and center, worked into the happy scenes.

The twenty-two person multi-talented cast did justice to the group numbers. The voice of Max von Essen, the male lead, got to me the most. Since I don’t read my theatre programs before the performances, I had not realized that I saw Max in Falsettos seven years ago, so I honestly did not expect that gorgeous singing voice to come out of him.

But as far as speaking voices go, you will find none better than that of Happy Anderson, the very funny male sidekick. I’ve never heard stage dialogue so clearly before!

That brings me to something for which I must give kudos to just about the entire cast—they did convincing Scottish accents, with all but the barmaid being understandable. That’s quite the accomplishment for whoever the dialect coach is. (I couldn’t find a program credit for that helper.)

A nice surprise was six-time Emmy winner for Cagney and Lacey, Tyne Daly, as the grown-up who seems to be in charge of the village. (In the original show, the character is the male schoolmaster; I’m not sure exactly what her job is in this rendition.) The experience of seeing Tyne up there came full circle for me—the only other time I had seen her on stage was when I was a tiny child watching her in a summer stock production! (Yes, I do have one of those memories. It serves me well, but it can get lonely at times.)

The Pasadena Playhouse has the perfect size stage for this show, and Jason Sherwood did a superb job with the sets. And I appreciated the very subtle flicker of the over-the-proscenium lanterns from time to time.

Early on, before I even knew that this was a new adaptation of Brigadoon, I made a note that “the dialogue must have been heavily rewritten.” As entertaining as the new script is, I think I would have preferred to hear the original dialogue. Since the nutty story stayed intact in this production, I would have liked to know exactly what people considered to be amusing repartee back in the dark ages of the 1940s!

As much as I always roll my eyes at the hard-to-believe love story in Brigadoon, I actually know that it is possible because…I fell in love with Mr. X at first sight, without even meeting him! (That came the next night. And, much to his relief, I have never sung about my feelings.) I also fell in love with Los Angeles at that same time, and, even as a teenager, knew it would all seem like a dream when I went home in a couple of weeks. (I even told my mother back then that it would feel like Brigadoon!) So I did give up my entire New York life, (family, friends, boyfriend, college,) to stay here to stalk get to know Mr. X, with no knowledge of how to take care of my sheltered self. But, of course, it didn’t all happen in one day. (And, although being together for about a hundred years now, when asked how he fell in love with me, Mr. X claims he’ll “let [me] know when it happens.” Can you see why I love the guy?)

You know I appreciate when an entertainment makes me think of something heavier, such as this world-applicable observation that Brigadoon’s timeline reminded me of. So I’m sharing how I came to the conclusion that time is different for each person. The briefest description is this: My friend Alicia was always late. I do mean always. On a busy day, we stopped at her house between events to heat-up chicken fingers for her kids, and quickly change outfits. The whole thing felt like it was taking no more than a half hour. But, as we left the house again, I looked at my watch, and it was…four hours later!!! I could not fathom how that happened. Another time, my friend Mitch took me to dinner before a Clippers game. I had never been to that restaurant before, so I had to study the menu, ask questions, (have ya met me?,) decide together what we wanted, have my slow self eat it all, get the specially-spiced nuts at the end of the meal, (which I ate, and savored, one at a time.) Then he paid the bill and I went to the ladies room, the whole while feeling terrible that we were going to miss the National Anthem and the start of the game because that entire shebang felt like it was taking two or three fabulous hours. But, from walking in to exiting, it turned-out to have been only…forty-five minutes! No lie.

So there’s my proof of the time and space continuum, which is why that hundred-years Brigadoon story doesn’t bother me as much as most irrational tales do. It doesn’t matter to the villagers what year it is—it just seems like the next day to them. How do they even have a calendar? The older people there must have been born before time was even calculated! (All that math is sooo confusing, even to my perfect-math-score-on-the-SATs self!)

Now that I’ve made your heads spin as much as mine, just go see this beautiful musical while the Pasadena Playhouse is offering the incredible opportunity. Just like Brigadoon itself, the chance may not present itself for another hundred years!

Brigadoon running through June 14, 2026
Pasadena Playhouse 39 South El Molino Avenue, Pasadena
626-356-7529 www.pasadenaplayhouse.org