Even though I wore out every album the Beatles released on Capitol between 1964 and 1969, I don't think there was an album I heard more often growing up than the original "Fantasticks" cast album with Jerry Orbach et al. My dad loved the cast album and dragged me to several productions of the musical. I think he appreciated the generational conflict woven into the story, the wit of the lyrics and the singable melodies. He (of course) identified with the parents; I (of course) identified with the kids.

In New York this past week I dragged my oldest daughter to see the revival of "The Fantasticks" at the Snapple Theater Center on 50th and Broadway. The original production famously opened off-Broadway at the Sullivan Street Playhouse in Greenwich Village in 1960 and continued its run for a mere 42 years. It was one of the unheralded victims of 9/11, closing in January 2002.

The revival is wonderful. Author and lyricist Tom Jones directs and steals the show, taking a hilarious turn as the histrionic old actor Henry under Jones's stage name "Thomas Bruce" (photo above). The cast is good, but it should especially be noted that Burke Moses ably fills Orbach's shoes as El Gallo. Ben Brantley's slightly disillusioned New York Times review captures the drama in this revival of the musical:

Mr. Bruce’s presence has an extra poignancy if you know that he played this part, when he was in his 30’s, when “The Fantasticks” first opened at the Sullivan Street Playhouse in 1960. And, oh, one other thing: Mr. Bruce’s real name is Tom Jones. That’s right, the Tom Jones who wrote the book and lyrics for “The Fantasticks,” and who has redirected the current production, in museum-replica style, according to the original staging by Word Baker, who died in 1995 but is still credited, in large type, in the Playbill for the show.

The truly gripping love story of “The Fantasticks” is not that of the Boy and Girl at the plot’s center but of the undying affection lavished on this bauble of a musical by Mr. Jones, Mr. Schmidt, Mr. Baker and the producer Lore Noto, who through sheer devotion and tenacity turned it into the Little Show That Wouldn’t Die.

Seeing the show this time around with my daughter, I realized that I was identifying with the parents and seeing it through my dad's eyes. Terry Teachout found the revival summoning a "ghost world," which is only one more reason to see it. Perhaps the best reason is the show's songs. Of all the show's numbers, I had forgotten the concluding song, "They Were You." It's a perfect number in a show full of inspired numbers, and it slayed me.

You can see in this production that the musical is in a sense less about the archetypal story that is its ostensible subject than it is about theater -- about theatricality -- itself. In his excellent Wall Street Journal review (subscription required, excerpted here) of the revival, Terry Teachout writes:

Part of what makes it so effective, in fact, is that Tom Jones's book takes all the stock devices of the Broadway musical, strips away their superfluities, and transforms them into timeless archetypes: two young lovers, two quarreling parents, two blundering stooges and a tall, dark stranger who appears from out of nowhere to set the simple plot in motion. Back in 1960 such extreme economy of means was rarely to be found in American musical comedy, which is one of the reasons why "The Fantasticks" made so strong an impression back then. Nowadays the miniature musical is an off-Broadway staple, but Mr. Jones's concise book remains exemplary -- and unlike the increasingly tuneless shows of today, "The Fantasticks" is blessed with an equally excellent score. (Harvey Schmidt wrote the music, Mr. Jones the lyrics.) The ballads are tender and yearning, the comic songs droll, and all are singable from intro to coda.

Teachout notes that Tom Jones is 78. I feel lucky to have seen him in this production of the show that merits the headline over Teachout's review: "The perfect musical."