'Brigadoon' at Light Opera Works: Faithful production is a bonnie trip through the heather
THEATER REVIEW: "Brigadoon" ★★★ Through June 12 at Cahn Auditorium, 600 Emerson St., Evanston; Running time: 2 hours, 45 minutes; Tickets: $32-$92 at 847-869-6300 or lightoperaworks.com
There's a full-on “Brigadoon” up in bonnie Evanston, replete with bagpipes, heather, tartans, warbling laddies and lassies and even a wee fog machine backstage belching out some of that special highland mist. Or a reasonable facsimile thereof.
They are not, alas, selling one of my favorite Scottish products in the lobby of the Cahn Auditorium — the rules of prohibition die hard on a very different northerly shore — but the 24-piece orchestra in the pit and any score by Alan J. Lerner and Frederick Loewe certainly deserves the respect of sobriety, at a minimum.
Indeed, this entire 1947 musical is treated with a great deal of respect by director Rudy Hogenmiller — whose production goes further than most for this company in offering an impressively substantial choreographic experience. The blueprint was created by the great Agnes de Mille and, as far as I could tell, all of the dance breaks are there in full, as is the entire entr'acte for your listening pleasure.
If you're looking for a revisionist “Brigadoon,” or a production that finds some arresting visual metaphor to illuminate its themes for a new generation, this is not your show. Light Opera Works operates under constraints, including a limited amount of time in its repressively traditional auditorium and a certain culture of curtain announcements, pauses, sound interference, clearings of throats, traditional scene changes and a general lethargy in getting from one place to another — or one feeling to another — that could use an injection of the highland fling.