ST. PETERSBURG — A teenage orphan comes under the spell of a wealthy older man. Without him she faces a life of servitude, either underemployed as a servant or as a vessel for producing children. Thanks to his helping hand, she grows in confidence and skill while also falling in love with the man she calls "Daddy."
In today's watchful climate, there is so much wrong with Daddy Long Legs it's hard to know where to start. The briefest synopsis would probably supply enough ammunition for a Twitter campaign about celebrating patriarchy and privilege.
Anyone who actually watches the show, however, with a book by John Caird and musical and lyrics by Paul Gordon, should see that this is a trenchant critique of those very forces. A fine cast, with top tier support in music and staging at Freefall Theatre, combine under Douglas Hall's direction for a deeply affecting show.
Only two characters tell the story, based on a 1912 novel by Jean Webster and later adapted to multiple film versions, with Mary Pickford (1919), Shirley Temple (1935) and Fred Astaire (1955). Returning actors Britta Ollmann and Nick Lerew, as Jerusha Abbott and Jervis Pendleton, carry a mostly sung musical in numbers that both narrate and evoke emotion more fully than do most Broadway musicals.
A set designed by Eric Davis, Freefall's artistic director, illuminates an upward trajectory through tall bookcases and steps playfully rendered as large books. Jerusha's education, made possible by an anonymous benefactor who was impressed by a couple of her essays, climbs rapidly through college, as do her blossoming social awareness and political conscience. The suitcases and steamer trunks for her moves out of the John Grier Home or a Pendleton family summer residence double as boulders on a mountainous path, an observation point for the New York skyline or a graduation platform.
In exchange for her tuition and expenses, Jerusha must write one letter a month to Pendleton's chosen alias "John Smith," who has stipulated that he will never reply. She writes exuberant letters he reads in his study, occasionally singing a line or two in a duet before filing them in a desk drawer.
He is bemused, charmed that she "has a brain and a wit and a fearless turn of phrase."
The rules he has contrived undermine their own premises because there is no such thing as a one-way relationship. It is inevitable they should somehow meet, although doing so entails layers of deception.
Ollmann, who is on stage nearly all the time, carries the larger load with an enviable exactitude. She moves with economy and grace, delivering an evolving character with a richness that never strays into floridity.
Lerew stays literally above her struggles on the set, dropping in judiciously and with increasing poignancy as his effort at detachment fails. A solo number, Charity, sketches the down side of that erstwhile praiseworthy act for its distinctions between high and low, benefactor and recipient, creating "a wall that cannot be climbed by either side."
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Explore all your optionsThey complement each other, even in their sweetly light soprano and tenor voices set to piano, guitar and cello that float out from behind the set under the direction of Michael Raabe.
What really ought to stand out about this seemingly traditional show is how well it fits within Freefall's stated mission, to give existing work a fresh twist. Beneath the music lie silent melodies, the timeliness of this turn-of-the-century work, which was first adapted to the stage in 1915, turning it into a vehicle for reform, including the sale of "Daddy-Long-Legs" dolls to support the adoption of orphans. The gaping flaws of that time, years before women's suffrage, contrast with its now endangered notions of the virtues of a liberal arts education and of carefully composed letters without a "send" button a fingertip away.
Contact Andrew Meacham at
ameacham@tampabay.com or (727) 892-2248. Follow @torch437.