Amateur Acting, Witty Script

While “On the Heir,” was overall innovative, the acoustical inadequacies of the Agassiz Theatre combined with the cast’s musical inexperience detracted from an otherwise superb script.

Marking the tenth anniversary of the Freshman Musical, the entirely first-year scripted, produced, and acted show ran April 20 to 22. According to the production company, it wasn’t geared solely toward pre-frosh, freshmen, or even Harvard students. A collaboration by writer and director Nathan D. Johnson ’09, producers Allegra M. Richards ’09 and Julia L. Renaud ’09, and lyricist and composer Nicholas N. Commins ’09, “On the Heir” successfully explored the more universal themes of leaving home, finding serendipitous love, and appreciating the past for all the right reasons.

The production chronicles the story of Theodore Jennings (Mac C. Bartels ’09) who inherits his grandfather’s most valuable possession: a desiccated vulture which allegedly belonged to a notorious Cincinnati thug. Against his avaricious family’s wishes, Theodore takes his family’s heirloom to the PBS show Antiques Roadshow to get appraised.

Along the journey from his depressing home to public television, he meets an unlikely love interest (Kathleen E. Hale ’09) and overcomes his inferiority complex.

Bartels was very engaging as the sarcastic, impenetrable protagonist, shining especially in his poignant apostrophe to the vulture (yes, to the vulture) at the end of the show.

Female lead Hale did the witty script justice, nailing the one—and sometimes 15—line comebacks to Bartels’s unmitigated insults. Though they didn’t hit the high notes of the songs as easily as one might have hoped, their banter was convincing and charismatic.

However, the minor characters clearly stole the spotlight. The colorful array of characters included a creepy show host (Hessel E. Yntema ’09) who frighteningly resembles Hugh Scully, an eccentric, bangled appraiser (Kimberly D. Hagan ’09), and a guileless bird connoisseur (Jon-Mark Overvold ’09) on a mission to get his nifty Parisian telescope appraised. In a brilliant moment, Overvold snaps out of a nap wondering, “Have I been abducted by carnies again?”

In the best-delivered scene of the show, two elderly sisters (Zoe K. Kawaller ’09 and Anna C. Smith ’09) brought their “infectious attitudes” and a useless family painting to be appraised on the show, delivering the catchy tune, “Masterpiece.” Later, Kawaller and Smith opened the second act as foxy cabaret singers, offering refreshing vocal precision.

The attractive set design (Kathleen E. Breeden ’09 and Sally H. Rinehart ’09) included Antiques Roadshow banners, a fancy living room, and a conventionally insipid backstage dressing room. The set for the red, decadent bar scene was especially attractive.

With 22 cast members, the larger-than-usual cast for Freshman Musicals was extremely effective. Although some characters had minimal roles, every cameo was well-delivered and provided relief from an otherwise insistently serious plot.

The most glaring defect of the production, however, was the awkward relationship between the Agassiz, the orchestra and the singers. The five-person orchestra delivered very polished pieces, doing justice to Commins’ exceptionally inventive compositions. But because of the inconvenient shape of the stage, the orchestra had to be muffled backstage, making it very difficult for the actors to listen to it during the performance.

While Commins tried to improve the musical and acoustical aspect of the production by tailoring the songs to the vocal range of the actors and reducing the size of the orchestra, the lag between the singers and the ensemble was, at times, noticeable.

While professionalism and technical perfection were not expected from a production put together entirely by freshmen, the cast stimulated its audience by being consistently animated and engaging.

Overall experimentally delightful, the show was not only a stretch for the capacities of the production team, but also for the audience’s imagination. In the penultimate scene, the unsightly vulture (Simon J. Williams ’09) clambered onto the stage and it took a moment for me to decide whether it was real or just the protagonist’s hallucination.

There are few mistakes that a passionate kissing scene amid a full-cast dance number can’t redress. The closing number, “On the Air,” an anthem to short-lived fame and unrealized fortune, was so spectacular that I hardly cared whether the cast was singing in the correct key or knew the words to the glorious song. Whether the final scene was improvised or not, the audience’s thunderous applause was justifiably approving.