Half-Pint Lives! Little House on the Prairie — The Musical!

Playing the ponies Almanzo (Kevin Massey) shows off his horse power. Photo © Michal Daniel, 2008

 

-- by NNN guest writer & LOGOonline ad sales producer Eric Walter

 

What town but Minneapolis could host the world premiere of a musical adaptation of "Little House on the Prairie"? Minnesota is obsessed with the prairie, and Minneapolis loves its theater. (It boasts more theater seats per capita than any other city outside of Manhattan.) Michael Landon would be proud.

The musical is a conflation of the more notable events of the adolescence of Laura Ingalls Wilder taken from the series of Little House books she wrote. The Ingalls family is on the move again, this time out west to a tiny settlement in Dakota Territory, in search of a homesteader claim from Uncle Sam.

The show's overture begins with an Indian drumbeat, which introduces an American identity crisis that underlies everything about this show: These pioneers are essentially intruders on land that is not theirs. Do we praise them for their adventurous wanderlust — or do we despair over the spoiled prairie?

 

This must be surreal for her, right? Melissa Gilbert as Ma Ingalls. Photo © Michal Daniel, 2008

 

Feh — for now, we’ll simply follow the three Ingalls girls to school, where Laura meets her nemesis, the prissy, transplanted city girl Nellie Oleson. We see the long winter, in which Laura's future husband Almanzo risks his life for the bags of grain that save the town from starvation. Mary goes blind; Laura becomes a teacher; and the whole thing ends with Laura's and Almanzo's wedding and the couples' departure from town.

It’s an uncluttered story, like the unmarked prairie, propelled only by the passage of time and the inevitability of life events. And maybe that's the point. Every simple set rises against a flat sky-colored backdrop suggesting a never-ending horizon. The score is broad, and the songs are uncomplicated, though at times they soar.

Already, audiences from in and around Minnesota are lapping it up, despite tepid reviews. The show is consistently selling out. In the first week of sales, more than 60% of tickets went to first-time buyers, says Lee Henderson of the Guthrie Theater.

 

We are proud prairie folk. And we love to wear patterns! Photo © Michal Daniel, 2008

 

Visitors can pick up a "Prairie Girl" t-shirt or an "I Love Almanzo" button from the gift shop. And rows of women wearing home-made sun bonnets, like Harry Potter fans with their lipstick lightening scars, are a common sighting. They are as much an attraction as the show itself, drawing their own applause and posing for tourists' pictures.

The show has drawn a good mix of both local and Broadway actors, but probably the biggest name in the show is the original “Half-Pint” herself, Melissa Gilbert, who became a TV megastar playing Laura, and who here plays Ma Ingalls. Mobs of fans greet her in the theater lobby after performance, not surprisingly. (Like, you could resist?)

Gilbert is a charmer, but she is not a singer, bless her heart. Her voice is simple, broad as the prairie, and unadorned. It makes her stand out against her more vocally talented co-stars. She turns in a fine performance otherwise, if not a bit saccharine and scrubbed. I wish I had seen her more dirt on her face and hands.

 

Would you turn this man down? Laura (Kara Lindsay) seems uncertain about Almanzo's (Kevin Massey) intentions. Photo © Michal Daniel, 2008

 

In fact, everyone in this production is just a little too clean. Granted, this is an American  musical. How real can it get? Prairie Pioneers did not routinely throw down their spades and saws to leap into song-and-dance numbers. (Though, Pa did have his fiddle.) But this staging is a sort of Hallmark card notion of prairie life. Even the books, though written for children, were honest about harsh realities and did not betray any fanciful notions about the "the simple life."

Things didn’t get harsh at all until the much bleaker second act, which begins to suggest just how unhappy prairie lives (and prairie wives!) could be. Things get a little more real when Laura leaves home to earn money for her blind sister’s college education, and when winter starvation and prairie fires threaten the survival of her friends and family back home. (And Britney thought she had it bad.)

 

Let' dance With nothing but Sex and the City reruns on TV, Carrie (Maeve Moynihan), Mary (Jenn Gambatese) and Ma (Melissa Gilbert) kill time dancing in the kitchen, while Pa (Steve Blanchard) plays his fiddle. Photo © Michal Daniel, 2008

 

The runaway performances belong to the three Ingalls girls. Laura (Kara Lindsay) has a strong, soaring voice, and she beautifully compliments Mary (Jenn Gambatese) and Carrie (Maeve Moynihan) in two- and three-part harmonies. Easily the best song of the production, “I’ll Be Your Eyes,” is a tear-jerking testament to Laura and Mary’s reliance on each other.

Nellie, the snooty, "well-bred" city girl, is a perfect nemesis for Laura. She is a pink peppermint cartoon to Laura’s day-dreaming, barefoot, scabby-kneed tom-boy. It is a simplified relationship, just two girls who hate each other, and they go through the motions of a rivalry over Almanzo. It brings some comedy into the show, but there’s no real meat to it.

The Laura/Almonzo love story is well-paced and well-conceived. That the show ends on a happy note might be almost comical to fans of the books who know darn well that the newlyweds’ "happy, golden years" will be neither happy nor golden — but let's not get ahead of ourselves.

 

Whoa, Nellie!  That little b*tch Nellie Oleson (Sara Jean Ford) gets off on the wrong (bare) foot with Laura (Kara Lindsay) on her very first day at school. Photo © Michal Daniel, 2008

 

The show is more about women than anything else. It is the women who stand out as a broad range of types: adventurer, scholar, snob, embittered realist, protector. By comparison, all the men are identical. They can build and destroy and lift heavy things, but their main achievement is to have transported these women out into the middle of nowhere and handing them a set of impossible circumstances. It is the women who keep the story moving forward, simply in making do.

 

Laura (Kara Lindsay) and Almanzo (Kevin Massey) ride off into the sunset toward an uncertain future. Photo © Michal Daniel, 2008

 

The good news is, the show runs through October 19th! The bad news is it’s totally sold out, but they do offer 12 daily rush tickets, and people do exchange seats, so you could get lucky. And really, if you're into Midwestern kitsch, you might try to catch it before it pulls up stakes. With the formidable weight of the venerable Guthrie Theater behind it, I’m sure "Prairie"  will do well as a touring show, but I’m not sure that it’s grand or gaudy — or even dirty — enough for Broadway. (I'm not convinced that Broadway is, or even should be, a reasonable indication of a show's success, however.) But if that's the aim of the producers, then I sincerely wish them luck, because "Prairie" is a fine little show.

 

Comments

[Byf]

I thought "Teach the Wind" was the best number. It really drove home the loneliness of women on the prairie.