The Fantasticks ran in New York from 1960 to 2001, and has been revived there of late.

This Tom Jones-Harvey Schmidt musical has a certain artistic purity—not just merit but purity—to complement the lovely ballads and nice love story.  It’s small but endearing.  Not unserious either, although all those Big Apple audiences might not have cared about that.  It has to do with love’s protectiveness when the surrounding world is harsh.  The libretto can be hokey, but it is also literate.  Satisfying enough to be more than literate are such songs as “Try to Remember,” “Much More” and “It Depends On What You Pay,” wherein the last of which the repeated word rape never means more than abduction.

The Fantasticks (Photo credit: Wikipedia)