Welcome to the Scottish Highlands, where the
mists of the moors hide a magical town called
Brigadoon, and weary travelers can spend a day
enjoying good music, friendship and even find
the ever-elusive true love of their lives.
But be careful — it can only happen one day out
of a century.
Everything about the Broadway musical
“Brigadoon” is enough to make a woman swoon,
said Brenda Mueller, director of the Lyric Light
Opera’s production of the 1947 Lerner and Loewe
classic set for three weekends in July at
McIntyre Hall in Mount Vernon.
“You cannot find any more beautiful music from a
musical than in ‘Brigadoon,’” Mueller said,
while preparing to lead the chorus through a
scene last week during rehearsals.
The romantic storyline continues to satisfy the
imaginations of audiences years after it was
written, Mueller said. “It’s magical. There’s
the mists of the Highlands; you enter it and it
just sweeps you away.”
The production is the perfect fit for the
Scottish-themed lineup of events throughout July
in Skagit Valley, Mueller said. Lyric Light
Opera is collaborating with the Skagit Valley
Highland Games, set for July 14-15 at Edgewater
Park in Mount Vernon.
Part of that collaboration has meant a few
professional bagpipers who will compete in the
games have offered to add the uniquely Highland
sound of their instruments to the 23-member
orchestra, which includes violins, woodwinds and
a more classical style of music than most
Broadway musicals.
Although it’s usually performed as a typical
stage musical, Brigadoon has been considered
borderline opera, and sometimes is performed by
opera companies, Mueller said.
Standing in the hallway of the church where the
45-member cast was rehearsing last week, opera
singer Megan Chenovick, who plays the female
lead Fiona, said she was excited by the
opportunity to do some “classical” singing for
her part.
“There’s some great music and so many standards
that people are going to recognize,” Chenovick
said, including the romantic “Come To Me, Bend
To Me,” and “The Love Of My Life.”
Some of the tunes were so well-written that
there isn’t much a singer has to do to make them
new and fresh, said Tim Glynn, who plays the
young, energetic Charlie.
“ ‘Come To Me, Bend To Me’ makes me feel so not
needed,” Glynn said. The emotions that flow out
of the lyrics and music are enough by themselves
to sway an audience, he said.
Glynn is one of five professional performers
hired by Lyric Light Opera for the $100,000
show. Those leads come from Seattle and have
performed with such large theater companies as
the 5th Avenue in Seattle and the Village
Theatre in Everett and Issaquah.
Many cast members in the Stanwood-area based
group are from Anacortes, Arlington, Bellevue,
Camano Island, Marysville and Mount Vernon.
“Brigadoon” is the second big Lyric Light Opera
production since the group was formed in 2006
out of the remnants of the Northwest Civic Light
Opera. It’s a larger, more elaborate — and
costly — endeavor than the group’s first show
last July, “Annie Get Your Gun.”
And despite the hiring of five professional
performers, Mueller said she’s sticking firmly
to the group’s aim to provide opportunities for
local young theater hounds to learn the ins and
outs of theater production.
The professional actors were hired on the
condition that they serve as mentors to other,
less-experienced members of the cast — an
arrangement that’s already reaping benefits,
Mueller said.
“We have a high level of excellence in our
shows, and this is a part of that,” Mueller
said.
She said she’s trying to stay as true as
possible to the Scottish tradition.
Despite its Scottish backdrop, the real story of
“Brigadoon” is based on a fairy tale from
Germany, written by Friederich Gerstacker, about
a mythical cursed village. In 1947, when the
musical was written for Broadway, the United
States had just come out of World War II and
American audiences weren’t fond of Germany. So
the location of the story and its character
names were changed to reflect a Scottish theme.
But the fairy tale edge was kept mostly intact.
In the story, two New Yorkers, Tommy Albright
and Jeff Douglas, travel to the Scottish
Highlands and get lost during a hunting
expedition. They hear faint music, and follow it
through the heavy mist to a village where
everything harkens back to a simpler time. The
foreign visitors arrive just in time to witness
the wedding of Charlie and his fiancée, Jean.
Through the day they meet a list of colorful
characters: The aggressively lovelorn Meg, who’s
searched high and low for a husband; Harry
Beaton, who is in love with the beautiful Jean;
Angus McGuffie, who employs Meg and the gentle
and good-hearted Fiona.
Oh, and did we mention that Fiona is beautiful?
That goes without saying — this is, after all, a
fairy tale at heart.
As the day goes on, Tommy finds himself falling
in love with Fiona. The mystery of the village
is revealed, too. Turns out, a parish priest 200
years prior to their arrival made a pact with
God to make the village disappear only to become
visible once every 100 years to protect it from
the evils of the outside world. If someone
leaves the village, it will disappear into the
mist forever.
As the story continues, the future of the
village is threatened, jealousy leads to
tragedy, and Tommy and Fiona discover they’re a
perfect match.
“The reason I like ‘Brigadoon’ so much is that
there’s such a really broad emotional spectrum,”
said Ryan Edwards of Arlington, who plays the
jealous and self-absorbed Harry Beaton. “They
explore a lot of difficult emotions that makes
the play sentimental, a bit moody, tragic and a
bit elated, in back-to-back scenes.”
Aside from the rigorous dancing that
incorporates hopping, twirling and some ballet —
a totally new challenge for Edwards — the other
big challenge for the cast has been adopting an
authentic, but intelligible, Scottish brogue.
“I didn’t know anything about the Scottish
accent (before the show),” said Jeannette
d’Armand of Seattle, who plays the bubbly and
flirtatious Meg.
“You don’t dress up, you dress oop,” she added,
laughing.
Then there’s the constant rolling of the “Rs,”
that keeps the actors constantly thinking about
their words, she said.
“But it’s been fun for me — something new to
learn,” she said.
• Beverly Crichfield can be reached at
360-416-2135 or
bcrichfield@skagitvalleyherald.com
