This 'Hearth' is home to few sparks

A CRICKET ON THE HEARTH, Old Social Hall, This Is the Place Heritage Park, closes May 21 (582-1847). Running time: one hour, 40 minutes (one intermission).

Two years before the pioneers arrived in the Valley of the Great Salt Lake (and seven years before the forming of the first Deseret Dramatic Association), Charles Dickens wrote "A Cricket on the Hearth," far less well-known than his "A Christmas Carol."

Now, some 160 years later, Michael Jesse Bennett's reactivated DDA, which produces period pieces in the Old Social Hall, is staging the world premiere of a musical adaptation of Dickens' "Cricket."

This all-new production resembles what might be called "drawing room melodrama." You might want to read the story first, because the script is hard to follow. It's interrupted by ballads that do little to propel the plot.

The title comes from an old Victorian saying that "to have a cricket on the hearth is the luckiest thing in all the world."

In Bennett's adaptation — in which he collaborated with daughter Rose Marie Smith on lyrics and music — there is a large, green "cricket" (Christine Tate), who sings, narrates and dances at intervals. I came out thinking that a smaller, energetic 5- or 6-year-old boy might have worked much better. The larger-than-life cricket comes off as more intrusive than helpful.

There were some strong performers in the 10-member cast — particularly Don Harris as Caleb Plumber, a wise, gentle man who works for a local toymaker and who has a daughter (Betha) who is blind, and Dan Christensen — a tall chap who plays John Peerybingle, sort of the Victorian equivalent of a Fed Ex carrier. He and his much younger wife are the parents of a young infant.

One night, John brings home a mysterious old man he has found while making his deliveries. Listed as simply "Old Man" on the playbill, he is not who he appears (played by Anthony Lovato, whose youthful looking face is in stark contrast to the frightful wig).

The little community where the Peerybingles live is looking forward to the wedding of Caleb's boss — the fiercely, gruff toymaker, Mr. Tackleton (Ranleigh Johnson) and attractive young May Fielding (May Oltmanns).

But things take a surprisingly dark, melodramatic turn when the Old Man intervenes.

The music, for the most part, fits the Victorian period. There is one slightly comical piece, sung by May's mother (Michele Bennett), about the travails of trying to raise an infant — with constant interruptions by the Cricket interjecting silly, unnecessary narration.

The entire production plods along at a drearily slow pace. The only discernible sparks were from the fake embers on the cricket's hearth.

---

E-mail: ivan@desnews.com