Try to remember when life was so tender
that no one wept except the willow.
Try to remember when life was so tender
that dreams were kept beside your pillow.
Try to remember when life was so tender
that love was an ember about to billow.
Try to remember and if you remember then follow.

And they would follow (follow follow follow follow follow) ... back to the theatre over and over again, to be back in a time and a place when life was more tender.

I must admit, the first time I saw the show, on a class trip in the eighth grade, in The Fantastick's 28th year, I was amiss as to exactly why it had lasted so very long. I remember the evening quite clearly... there was a terrible rainstorm and ergo a waterfall type leak coming into the Playhouse two rows behing me the whole show long. The theatre was about three times smaller than my own incredibly tiny high school theatre and almost no set at all. I remember that the actor who played El Gallo was so handsome and I wanted him to sing each and every song. The music was beautiful and the actors were wonderful... it was all quite basic and very wet.

The second time I saw the show, this time in college, in The Fantastick's 34th year, I appreciated more the longevity and began to explore exactly why this Methuselah had lasted. The lyrics touched me in a different way and I could see the longing in people's eyes as they listened and watched... they felt younger, they remembered their first loves, they heard harp music playing as confetti was thrown upon them. It was joyful.

The final time I saw the show, in The Fantastick's 41st year, I was thankful it was still there. There was something incredibly reassuring about it... about the lasting simplicity of the entire event. That in this day when theatre has become such a business, that something so uncomplicated could still be going strong. I remember walking up to the small stage when the show was over and touching the curtain on which Harvey Schmidt, also a graphic artist, had handpainted The Fantasticks with heavy purple paint in an oddly curvy, spiky writing. I wondered if it was the original one. I think it was.

Unfortunately, it could not last forever. January and February are typically difficult months for the theatre, both Broadway and off, and had been especially so for The Fantasticks since the 1970's. Often times, there were only a handful of audience members in the house during those times, but larger crowds during the rest of the year always managed to compensate. The Fantasticks was consistently helped by the fact that The Sullivan Street Playhouse's longtime landlord had signed a run-of-the-play rent contract with Lore Noto. Increases were negtotiated in good faith beginning in the 70's but the show always relied on a the special relationship with the theatre owner. Sadly the theatre was sold in the late 1990's and the hardships became too difficult to endure without the security of the former landlord/show relationship.

For a while, there were rumors of moving the production, which continued to be marginally successful, but Jones and Schmidt turned down the idea. The Sullivan Street Playhouse, which seats 135 people, and had its roots as a townhouse and a speakeasy long before The Fantasticks began, has a strange design intrinsic to the longlasting musical. The authors also relied on the bohemian, eccentric feel of the entire Greenwich Village area. If it could not remain there, it would close. And so now, if you wish to hear the sweet sounding music and have confetti thrown upon you, you must visit the show's enduring website at www.thefantasticks.com.

The list of actors who had performed at The Sullivan Street Playhouse is endless. People of note include Kevin Kline, the Tony Award winning director, Gerald Gutierrez, Rita Gardner, the TV weatherman Ira Joe Fisher, Eileen Fulton, F. Murray Abraham and Jerry Orbach. Abraham has told of performing in the 1960's for $70 a week, and of working the night of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination. Hundreds of actors tell stories of having their start at The Sullivan Street Playhouse.

And so on the 13th of January, 2002 the curtain fell for the final time. The show which opened when Dwight Eisenhower was President, closed with George W. Bush, nine Presidents later. The 44 original investors have had a 19,465% return on their small venture all those years ago. The Fantasticks has played in every American state in over 11,00 productions. It has played at The White House and Ford's Theatre, and has been seen in over 67 nations from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe including: Germany, Australia, Japan, New Zealand, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Hungary, Thailand, Ireland, Italy, Israel and Czechoslovakia. After taking all of this in, it is not dfficult to see why Tom Jones said that he felt no sadness at the final performance. "So many good shows don't run for three weeks," he said, "You can't be sad for a show that ran for so many years and so many people know and love."

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