Dancing youths…painted scenes…things I almost remember… then a song— someone sings… once upon a…September… when the Children’s Playhouse of Maryland presented the area premiere of Anastasia, the much-anticipated, full-length musical. A sparkling gem, a radiant endeavor, this delightful and charming show is both beautiful and serene, full of humor and heart, and a spectacular start to the 2023/2024 season at CPM. Directed by Liz Boyer Hunnicutt, with Musical Direction by Charlotte Evans Crowley, and Choreography by Rachel Miller, these talented young performers will take you on a journey to the past that you’ll never forget.
Staging a bear of a musical like Anastasia, which is politically sharper than its animated counterpart from 1997, is a tremendously daunting feat (and you would think that Ahrens & Flaherty {music & lyrics} and Terrance McNally {libretto} would have made it easier considering they cut the Zombie Rasputin and his little sidekick Bartock the singing bat) but one to which the CPM production time not only rises but soars over with seasoned skill, giving these young performers the professional quality aesthetic, direction, and overall musical theatre experience that they deserve. Technical Director Diane M. Smith, who serves as the show’s set designer and construction master, has blended projections (by CJ Roberts) with movable scenery. The most impressive piece of the show’s scenery is the train carriage; a wooden skeletal frame structure with seats that showcases the number “We’ll Go From There” with the moving projections of being on train tracks carving their way through the Russian mountains to Paris, and the train carriage moves too! (it’s physically turned by stage-hands so that you can see the profile view and front-facing or rear-facing windows! It’s pretty wild.) Accompanied by the illuminating lighting design of Tyrell Stanley, you get a polished aesthetic feel that enhances the overall performance experience for both the actors and the audience.
Robyn Alvarez and her assistant Theresa Foggo pull out all the stops when it comes to outfitting the cast for this production. The show opens in the time of the Tzar and Romanov rulers of Russia, celebrating at a grand winter ball. Think every Disney Princess Wedding dress you’ve ever seen and then some— Alvarez and Foggo have found them all and put them prominently on display for Tzarina Alexandra (Felix Baker), Maria Romanov (Lillian Colon), Olga Romanov (Veronica Donato), Teen Anastasia (Molly Foggo), and Tatiana Romanov (Gracie Roberts.) Alvarez and Foggo match the winter-white aesthetic for Tzar Nicholas (Danny Harrer) and Prince Alexei Romanov (Ronald Gusso.) But the wondrous winter ballgowns and suits are not the only marvels hiding in Alvarez and Foggo’s sartorial selection. The swanky red bugle-bead-tassel affair featured on the Countess Lily in the second act is sending roaring 20’s vibes while the elegant gowns— first blue and then red— for Anya as she encounters The Dowager Empress are stunning. Costumes across the board could easily deserve their own review for how creative and on-point they are for the differing socio-economic classes featured in the show as well as the time periods in which they are stamped.
As always, Musical Director Charlotte Evans Crowley does a superb job in bringing the voices a tremendous amount of young performers together in a robust, energetic, and yet beautifully polished fashion. You never get the feeling that these are “kids trying to sing at musical theatre” but rather feel as if these are trained singing, actors who just look very, very young while they perform. Crowley inspires the emotions behind the music (carefully guided off to the side by percussionist Lisa Wood, who ensures that everyone stays on tempo, on beat, and on cue) and gets a clean sound out of the ensemble as well as the soloists. And this is a particularly tricky task during “Quartet at the Ballet” where four of the principal characters are racing all around one another vocally while the dancers perform centerstage. It’s impressive.
Speaking of the dancing, choreographer Rachel Miller has put her best foot forward with some of these Russian-inspired foot-kicking-arm-winging dance moves. The glorifying moment for Miller’s choreography is the intense ballet routine that gets featured during the scene at the ballet. It’s rare that modern musicals feature moments where real ballet can be incorporated without disrupting the flow of the narrative but this one has it written straight into the libretto. Molly Foggo, as Odette and Bailey Gomes as Prince Siegfried, along with Amelia Watts as the Black Swan, deliver a stunning series of complex ballet movements that truly take your breath away during that number, “Quartet at the Ballet” and the scenes book-ending the number. Foggo, Gomes, and Siegfried are accompanied by The Swans (Theresa Smith, Kailyn Quince, Brynn Blair, and Daniela Alvarez) to complete the marvelous wonder that is the ballet— with earnest and dazzling ballet moves that showcase all seven of these performers ballet skillset.
The ensemble as a whole— Daniela Alvarez, Lily Anderson, Jack Atkins, Amelia Auvil, Felix Baker, Kaitlyn Bell, Marcella “Ella” Bell, Brynn Blair, Meghan Chrzanowski, Lillian Colon, Christian DeBaufre, Veronica Donato, Angelina Ferris, Emily Foggo, Molly Foggo, Bailey Gomes, Allyson Gray, Ronald Gusso, Danny Harrer, Arianna Harris, Nathaniel Kaelber, Selena Mason, Temperance Oppel, Kailyn Quince, Colton Roberts, Gracie Roberts, Victor Scigala, Theresa Smith, Amelia Watts— are enthusiastic, engaging, and full of energetic talent, whether they’re playing the poor, distressed Russians on the street, the polished citizens and denizens of France, or travelers on the train. Standout performances include Victor Scigala as Count Ipolitov who delivers a haunting solo featuring during “Still, I Pray You” and Colton Roberts who is hilarious as the stumble-drunk bum singing during “The Neva Flows (Reprise)” and is snappy, sassy, and puts quite the stage presence forward in the cameo role of Count Leopold. Also keep your eyes on Nathaniel Kaelber, who plays Gorlinksy, and while this role only has a moment’s worth of featured lines, Kaelber delivers them with such harsh brutality, you get the villainous shivers shooting straight up the spine. Enough praises can’t be lauded on this talented bunch for their capabilities to sing and dance with all of the vibrant radiance required to make a musical like Anastasia the success that it is at Children’s Playhouse of Maryland; you’ll love watching them bounce and babble with gossip during “A Rumor in St. Petersburg” as much as you’ll delight in seeing them party-thrash about during “Land of Yesterday.”
Burning bright in a nostalgic blaze of glory, Bella Comotto bursts out as a conflagration of spirit, intense vocal prowess, and dazzling charm in the role of Countess Lily. You actually only catch a brief glimpse of Comotto’s character in the first-act; she’s a disenfranchised handmaiden to The Dowager Empress, but there’s no mistaking her sensational singing skill or astonishing character work once the Countess Lily character comes into her own. “Land of Yesterday.” The song is a vamped up blaze of sultry jazz and saucy swank, giving out Sutton Foster vibes for miles and Comotto nails it every inch of the way. A truly fierce firecracker that has every attendee of the club (and every member of the audience) hanging on her every word as if it were life itself, Comotto is nothing shy of a sparkling Roman candle, burning bright with a sensationalism that makes her most unforgettable.
And it’s not just the way she belts out “Land of Yesterday” with chutzpah and panache. It’s her quirky-charming-standoffish chemistry with Vlad Popov (Max Ozbolt) that seals the deal. Ozbolt, who is readily recognized for heightened campy caricature work, astounds the audience with the epitome of balance in this off-kilter character of Vlad Popov. Channeling these older energies to create a believable, aging character (when you’re not even legally an adult) is a tall order but its one that Ozbolt delivers on tenfold. He has struck the perfect balance of gentle humor, seriousness, and all-round loveable rapscallion poser. When he leads “The Countess & The Common Man”, a duet shared with Comotto’s Countess Lily, you get this divine chemistry that is both old-world nostalgic and yet charmingly off-beat. When they tango together during this musical number, it’s a dance with spunk and romance, a rare combination that in their capable hands is pulled off brilliantly. Ozbolt has an extraordinary voice as well, which is featured not only in duets with Comotto but during “Learn to Do It” the trio-piece with Dmitry and Anya; he’s perfectly situated in the role of Vlad.
It isn’t just Ozbolt who has to convince the audience that his character is believably beyond his years. Miranda Cockey (though delicately aided with a solid white wig and facial makeup) presents a regal Dowager Empress who moves, sounds, and behaves as if time and tragedy has worn her thin. There is a priceless little interaction with Cockey and Young Anastasia (Meghan Chrzanowski) at the very beginning of the musical, which makes it that much more devastating to see the hardened and embittered woman that Cockey delivers many years later. When she sings her verse of “Once Upon a December” you get the haunting nostalgia of hope that has been dashed one too many times and it’s a stirring moment, carefully navigated by Cockey’s wondrous voice. Her song “Close the Door” is equal parts tragic and really gives the audience a sense of needing to cry for her pains.
While those of us who grew up on the film (or who have been exposed to it) may be having an internal struggle with accepting the lack of Rasputin and Bartok in this stage adaptation, but once you see and hear Ethan Howard in the role of Gleb (the show’s antagonizing ‘bad guy’ for lack of any true villainy), you’ll get over it. Howard masterfully tackles this complex role, that even many adults who perform this production struggle with. Gleb (though in a less life-ending way) faces the same struggle of a Javert-type, he’s been raised to do what’s right but what if what’s right isn’t really right, what if it’s actually wrong? That ethical struggle of conscience is delivered superbly in the hands of Ethan Howard and I cannot stress enough how impressive that is, especially given his young age. And his voice is a soaring book of emotional expressiveness, which well-serves “The Rumors Never End” setting the tone of darkness and immediately sending the message— both to the characters acting with him and the audience watching him— that he is dangerous and we should not like him. You get harrowing sounds from him during “Land of Yesterday (Reprise)” and a deeply disturbing emotional gut-punch when he hits the sustain during “Everything to Win (Reprise)/Still/The Neva Flows (Reprise.)” Howard does a sensational job of mastering this deeply convoluted and complex character.
Have you heard? Shahmeer Mirza’s in St. Petersburg! Playing the affable, loveable, and sometimes delightfully obnoxious Dmitry, Mirza is the perfect fit for this fun-loving character. Never one to leave the audience wondering as to what his character is thinking or feeling, you get a striking amount of reactive response, particularly in facial expressions and body language, when it comes to how Mirza lets Dmitry interact with Anya. There are definitely moments when all you get is a look or a double-take or a shift in posture but it speaks volumes more than any text ever could. In addition to all of the layered character work Mirza is putting into his performance he brings a stellar set of pipes to the performance. Numbers like “A Rumor in St. Petersburg” and “Learn To Do It”’ give you an enlightened sample of how boisterous and engaged with the music he can be. “We’ll Go From There”, featuring both Dmitry and Anya, has more hopeful and determined overtones to it, but where Mirza’s voice truly shines is in “In A Crowd of Thousands”, a duet alone with Anya, where he paints an exacting picture of his half of their shared memory, which twines and melds divinely with her half of the song.
Their bristly-turn-meet-cute chemistry— Mirza and Reese Bruning, playing the leading role of Anya— keeps the plot jittering forward. This is a bumpy fun musical where you’re never quite sure what’s going to happen next and a lot of that directional shift in the plot is guided by the friendship-come-romance that Mirza and Bruning create together. When the pair alight upon the aforementioned singular duet, “In a Crowd of Thousands” their combined performance blazes this number into a nostalgic torch song of happier times. It’s Burning’s delivery of that line— “then he bowed” and Mirza’s perfection in reaction to hearing it that just breaks your heart and gives you the happy-sad-ugly-cry vibes; it’s remarkable.
Navigating the dizzying track of Anya, who is and isn’t and always was but never truly my be Anastasia, Reese Bruning is serving up classic fairytale princess in both voice and aesthetic. It’s an unfairly high-set standard when an iconic animated song makes it way into a stage musical because everyone, consciously or not, is going to be listening to that number, trying to see if it aligns with their memory of how it sounded when they first saw it and heard it in the animated film years and years ago. Bruning knocks it out of the park when it comes to her delivery of “Once Upon a December” sounding both hauntingly familiar and refreshingly new. There’s an undeniable spirit that Bruning brings to the table, particularly when she sings her portions of “My Petersburg”, and that shocking little solo, “A Secret She Kept.” The moment of truth comes when the stage is vacated, all but for Bruning, and she belts at the top of her powerhouse vocals and emotional capacity, ringing to the rafters with all her might for “Journey to the Past” making it the phenomenal Act I closer that it’s written to be. Kind yet street-savvy and sweet but not naïve, you get the perfect heroine from Bruning’s portrayal of Anya.
So forget where you’re from— you’re in Essex, people come! CPM will show you that French “joie de vivre!” It’s an absolute delight, a must-see every night— because CPM’s Anastasia holds the key! Do not miss this brilliant production!
Running Time: Approximately 2 hours and 35 minutes with one intermission
Anastasia plays through October 8th 2023 with Children’s Playhouse of Maryland in the Lecture Hall of the Administration Building at the Community College of Baltimore County Essex Campus— 7201 Rossville Boulevard in Baltimore, MD. For tickets call the box office at (443) 840-2426 or purchase them online
