‘Little Women’ plays to Chance Theater’s strengths

By Eric Marchese

At first glance, the Broadway musical version of “Little Women” might not be your typical Christmastime show. Yet, the 2005 show pushes all the right buttons for the season – chief among them the warmth generated by valuing family.

That would explain Chance Theater’s decision to use the show as part of its December rotation, along with “Anne of Green Gables” and “The Secret Garden.”

Louisa May Alcott’s classic, semi-autobiographical 1869 novel portrays the four March sisters in Concord, Mass., from 1863 to 1866: Blunt, headstrong, ambitious Jo (Ashley Arlene Nelson), the character Alcott based on herself; beautiful, romantic Meg (Laura M. Hathaway); kind, gentle Beth (Emma Nossal); and materialistic yet artistic Amy (Olivia Knox, alternating with Alea Jordan in the role).

The girls’ beloved Marmee (Rachel Oliveros Catalano) holds the family together in the absence of their army chaplain father. “Little Women” follows the sisters’ lives as they grow from teens to mature young ladies and are changed by events that affect their interrelationships.

As the story’s focus, Nelson delivers on Jo’s moxie, adventurous spirit, self-image as a famed author, and independence from men. She also leads the bulk of the songs, with potent solos in “Astonishing,” the show’s bid for an outright showstopper, and “The Fire Within Me,” Jo’s older-but-wiser confessional.

Jo does, of course, become romantically entwined – but her eventual match with Professor Bhaer yields an unlikely couple: Jo is impulsive and outspoken, while Nicholas Thurkettle’s German immigrant Bhaer is aptly tentative and courtly.

The script practically dares us to dislike youngest March girl Amy, so envious of oldest sibs Meg and Jo that she spitefully burns Jo’s latest manuscript. But young Knox is allowed to shine when Amy’s more redeeming qualities surface, and Angela Griswold, as the older Amy, also manages to put her in a more favorable light.

Hathaway, Nossal and Catalano have nearly the opposite challenge: Meg, Beth and Marmee are almost impossibly perfect – Catalano’s Marmee is a virtual pillar of strength, patience and wisdom, traits bolstered by the stirring solos “Here Alone” and “Days of Plenty” – but we take these as honest portrayals and not unbounded literary license on Alcott’s part.

Nearly as sugary is the good cheer and can-do attitude of boy next door Laurie (Jimmy Saiz). After Jo rejects his offer of love, Laurie still winds up as part of the family, as does his tutor, the equally virtuous John Brooke (Stefan Miller).

Far harsher are stern, judgmental Aunt March (Sherry Domerego), who scolds Jo that in the real world, dreams must be earned, and Laurie’s stodgy, forbidding grandfather, Mr. Laurence (Glenn Koppel). In being aptly old-school, Domerego and Koppel are thoroughly winning.

From on stage, music director Bill Strongin delivers sensitive, affecting piano-playing of Howland’s score, which alternates up-tempo songs with lyrical material.

Flashed onto the rear upstage screen are Long’s fine pen-and-ink drawings, derived and adapted from photos, that evoke the simple, direct nature of Alcott’s era.

But what’s so ultimately charming about Chance’s “Little Women” is the utter simplicity of the acting style and overall presentation plus the show’s trappings – dialogue, lighting, background images, piano music, set design, furnishings and props. All are elegantly simple, sturdy and practical – exactly like “Little Women” itself.

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