Brigadoon – New York City Center

Kelli O’Hara and Patrick Wilson in Brigadoon at New York City Center. Picture: Joan Marcus

Brigadoon at New York City Center.

Star rating: five stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

Brigadoon, the mythical Scottish village that awakens out of the Highland mists for only one day every 100 years, departed from its routine by coming to glorious life for seven consecutive performances at New York City Center.

This gala presentation was a benefit for City Center programming, which includes the much-loved Encores! series celebrating musicals from the past.

This revival of Brigadoon was done Encores! style with the orchestra on stage, but the action extensively staged and choreographed. And it was hard to imagine that this 1947 musical – with book and lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner and music by Frederick Loewe – ever looked or sounded better.

After his success with An American in Paris, Christopher Wheeldon further validated his full-blown skill as a stage director along with his long-acclaimed reputation as a choreographer.

His production brought to the fore all of the show’s romanticism in captivating fashion, so much so that even its fantastical – or perhaps more accurately, problematic – turn of plot, the “miracle” that causes Brigadoon to do its 100-year thing, sounded credible…or at least it appeared to be so because the folks on stage so ardently believed it.

And those folks on stage were pretty wondrous too. They included Broadway’s luminous Kelli O’Hara at her most luminous, playing Fiona, a Brigadoon lady who falls in love with a jaded New Yorker, Tommy Albright, who happens to stumble upon the town while on a hunting trip to Scotland.

As Tommy, Patrick Wilson revalidated his credentials as a musical theatre leading man after years of curing satanic possession and doing other such deeds on the silver screen.

In both their duets and their solos, O’Hara and Wilson were simply rapturous, whether they were dealing with the floral seductiveness of ‘The Heather On the Hill’, the winsomeness of ‘Waitin’ For My Dearie’, the exultation of ‘Almost Like Being in Love’, or the seriousness of ‘From This Day On’.

Equally ear-filling was the rich tenor of Ross Lekites, playing Charlie Dalrymple, the young Brigadoonian who is betrothed to Fiona’s younger sister, Jean, sweetly limned by Sara Esty.

Lekites’ soaring ‘Come to Me, Bend to Me’, gracefully danced by Esty and other females dancers, was a standout, as was his jaunty ‘I’ll Go Home with Bonnie Jean’.

Adding to the stardust was Robert Fairchild, the ballet heart-throb-cum-Broadway star of An American in Paris, as bitter Harry Beaton, Jean’s rejected suitor.

Fairchild brought great dramatic power to Wheeldon’s balletic choreography, including Act I’s climactic sword dance, followed by Beaton’s attempt to leave Brigadoon, threatening the village’s future.

And there was still more company lustre: Aasif Mandvi, known for his work as a correspondent on the satirical TV news show The Daily Show, as Tommy’s sardonic New York pal, Jeff, and Stephanie J. Block, late of Broadway’s Falsettos, as Meg, an aggressive Brigadoon lassie with a thing for Jeff.

Other notable turns come from Patricia Delgado, giving movement to grief in the mesmerising ‘Funeral Dance’, and Dakin Matthews as a Brigadoon old-timer sagely relating the village’s history.

And of course, there is the orchestra – some 30 musicians strong conducted by music director Rob Berman – giving symphonic grandeur to Loewe’s inspired score. It all makes you hope that it won’t be too long before Brigadoon awakens again.

Ron Cohen