‘Lit­tle Wom­en’ draws pos­i­tive re­view from stu­dents

The re­lent­less hours, com­mit­ment, ef­fort, di­rec­tion and tal­ent poured into the The­atre De­part­men­t’s pro­duc­tion of  "Lit­tle Women" paid off in full. The Bethel com­mu­nity agrees this week­end’s mu­si­cal was a com­plete suc­cess! As a lover of the "Lit­tle Women" novel and movie, I had some lofty ex­pec­ta­tions for it, but found my­self pleas­antly sur­prised by the tal­ent, pro­fes­sion­al­ism and sheer en­ter­tain­ment of the per­for­mance.

The cast and di­rec­tion faced an in­cred­i­ble chal­lenge with their choice of pro­duc­tion, since the "Lit­tle Women" novel and movie are such beloved clas­sics. There’s ab­solute magic in grow­ing up with the March sis­ters and watch­ing them ma­ture, but that’s so much eas­ier to por­tray in text and film than on stage. Bethel’s The­atre De­part­ment went for it any­way and found suc­cess.

The set was sim­ple but ef­fi­cient, and the cos­tumes ac­cu­rately de­picted the Civil War cul­ture. Props seemed to be uti­lized well, and the mu­sic and dance pro­vided a deeper, artis­tic flair. "Lit­tle Women" is­n’t tra­di­tion­ally a mu­si­cal, so I ex­pected the songs to in­ter­fere with di­a­logue and make it awk­ward and choppy. There were a cou­ple of scenes that could’ve by­passed the mu­sic, but for the most part, the songs and dance added emo­tions that I would­n’t have per­ceived oth­er­wise.

The show’s most re­deem­ing merit in my opin­ion was the cast’s tal­ent across the board. Becki Visker did an out­stand­ing job cap­tur­ing Jo’s quirky, yet em­pow­ered spirit, and Jimmy Ben­net­t’s ef­fort­less voice wooed us in the au­di­ence – even if it could­n’t woo Jo.

“I thought Becki Visker, as Jo, did a great job,” said sopho­more Shelby Tuck. “She put just enough spunk and sin­cer­ity into the role to make it feel gen­uine.”

I thought Sab­rina Hal­lock’s solem­nity was spot-on as Marmee, and Sarah Fish com­pletely owned Aunt March’s crusty per­sona. Also, ex­tra ku­dos go to Pro­fes­sor Baer for his skilled Ger­man ac­cent and nat­ural hu­mor. When all said and done, each of the ac­tors and ac­tresses sold me their part, and I was sur­prised how emo­tion­ally in­vested I was when the fi­nal cur­tain fell.

Fresh­man Abi­gail Kirk judges with good au­thor­ity af­ter watch­ing the mu­si­cal three times as an usher.

“It was ex­cel­lent!” she said. “I wept every time at the scene with Beth and Joe on the beach… And the mu­sic! Bethel has truly won me over in terms of mu­si­cals with this pro­duc­tion. I can hon­estly say that the­atri­cal mu­si­cals can be won­der­ful, be­liev­able and deeply emo­tional. This one surely was!”

“The show was en­joy­able and en­ter­tain­ing,” said Tuck. “It was able to keep the au­di­ence's at­ten­tion un­til the very end, even though Jo did­n't end up with Lau­rie... boo!”

All in all, the com­bi­na­tion of tal­ented act­ing, cos­tum­ing and vo­cals cre­ated the magic I was hop­ing for. I was con­vinced that the girls had, in­deed, grown into women and found their ways in the world – the es­sen­tial sell­ing point of the en­tire mu­si­cal. Mis­sion ac­com­plished, "Lit­tle Women" cast and crew!