“Dueling Carnies” ***
By Elyse Orecchio (guest
reviewer)
Indieworks invites families to step right up and learn about a fun
piece of New York history with The Giant Hoax, a new musical by Kit
Goldstein Grant. Marking the 150th anniversary of “the biggest hoax in
history,” the production riffs on the true story of the Cardiff
Giant, a fabricated 10-foot sculpture passed
off in 1869 as a real-deal, petrified, prehistoric corpse of a giant. Crowds
lined up to pay 50 cents for a glimpse. (If that sounds far-fetched, the
business of catering to gullible chumps is alive and thriving at Ripley’s Believe It Or Not, right down the street from The Giant Hoax.)
Grant’s account of the infamous hoax is told from the perspective
of headstrong, but naïve, 10-year-old Emily (young adult Staci Stout). Outfitted in a blue checkered dress, she's a farm-girl who believes in fairies and mermaids
and giants (oh my). Tired of being scolded for telling tall tales, she runs away from home to see the Cardiff Giant. Short on pennies, Emily becomes
an apprentice as a barker to William “Stub” Newall (Forest VanDyke), the shady
showman with whom the girl forms an unlikely bond. Stub had the Cardiff Giant
manufactured to make a profit off an easily duped audience, but VanDyke
instills in him a sincere likability that might make you want to get in line
with your half-dollar, too.
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| Staci Stout and company. Photos: Brian E. Long. |
Star-to-be Staci Stout effortlessly switches gears between the
Annie Oakley-like farm girl, literally standing on a soap box with gusto, and
the scared kid quietly lost in her imagination, with a vocal range that charms
and impresses.
When the famed circus impresario P.T. Barnum (a cartoonish Paul
Aguirre) hears of the buzz garnered by the Cardiff Giant’s success, he tries to
buy it from Stub. Irked that Stub refuses to sell him the attraction, Barnum
manufactures a Cardiff Giant of his own, publicly proclaiming his is the real
deal and Stub’s is a fake. When a trial ensures to prove the validity of the
giant monuments, both showmen are forced to confess they produced the giant,
and Emily must come to terms with reality.
In the happy ending you would expect, Emily returns home to her
mother with renewed zest about the world holding “wonderful things.” As
for Stub, it turns out the crowd will now pony up a full dollar (double the
original price) to see the Cardiff Giant (the namesake of a Brooklyn
pub a century and a half later), because
checking out the source of a scandal is even cooler than an actual petrified
giant.
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| Company of The Great Hoax. |
Director Christopher Michaels makes solid use of the ensemble,
most of whom play multiple characters and rotate on and off to produce the
effect of larger crowds. Tyler Carlton Williams’s costumes and Theron
Wineinger’s sets place the show appropriately in 1869 upstate New York.
Kit Goldstein Grant delivers an effective score with a few
leave-the-theatre hummers and fun, playful lyrics. But despite some catchy
tunes, the already-short, 90-minute family production lags and feels caught in
an identity dilemma: perhaps too slow and complex for children but not savvy
enough for adults.
Theatre One/Theatre Row
410 W42nd St., NYC
Through December 7
Elyse Orecchio studied musical theatre at Emerson College, acting at CUNY
Brooklyn College, and English Linguistics & Rhetoric at CUNY Hunter
College. She has worked in nonprofit communications for more than a decade. She
lives in Sunnyside, Queens, with her husband Joe, kids Theo and Melody, and
three cats. eorecchio@gmail.com @elyseorecchio