Setting the stage

Lison Fidel can be reluctant if Grandma asks her to play her latest violin or piano recital piece. But give her a big stage and a paying audience, and the 8-year-old actress knows no fear.

Perhaps that is one reason the Broadway company producing "Les Miserables" chose her to play the trademark role of young Cosette with the national touring company. Alison's opening night is Tuesday at the National Theatre in Washington, D.C.Just how Alison landed such a unique role might be told more objectively by someone other than her father, but I know a few things since I have been along for the ride. I will try not to gush. Also to set the stage, no pun intended, it is important that I introduce my wife and Alison's mom, Melia.

There are really two beginnings to the story -- one for the social scientists about imprinting at birth, and the other involving injuries from mops and brooms.

The second ought to be explained first.

There is an active interest in musical theater on both sides of the family. Alison and her sisters, Taylor and Katie, auditioned for a community theater production of "Annie" in Springville when Alison was 4.

Audition experience was the primary incentive for trying out, but all three were cast as orphans and Katie, with curly red hair as factory equipment, got the title role.

Choreography during a production number, "Hard Knock Life," saw each of the dozen orphans dancing around stage with buckets, mops and brooms. Alison, the youngest in the cast, was so much shorter than the other girls that she routinely got smacked in the head with a mop or broomstick. If she got hit real hard, she would stagger into the wings as Mom and Dad fought off the urge to run from the audience to rescue her. Moments later she would be back for the rest of the number -- dancing, singing and ducking.

Alison won the role of Gretl in "The Sound of Music" at the Grand Theatre in Salt Lake City several months later. People who work with 5-year-olds know it is sometimes hard to know whether they are listening. "Look at me and say 'yes,' " director Pat Davis would say during rehearsal to make sure Alison was paying attention.

That first show got all three girls hooked on theater. Together they have done all or revue segments of "Annie" three times, "Brigadoon" and a Broadway revue. Alison had just landed a part in a Hale Centre Theatre production of "April Ann" when the call came from New York that she was wanted for "Les Miserables." Hale was very understanding -- they had been through this before when Janell Brook Slack had to bail from a production there when she won the part of Young Cosette in 1995.