One of the great “what if” tales of stage and screen wonders what if Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna, the youngest princess of the Russian Romanovs, did not die with her family in 1918 during the bloody Russian Revolution. And what if she resurfaced 10 years later to reunite with her dowager grandmother and claim the clan’s fortune?
The story has fascinated audiences for nearly 70 years, from a 1955 play to an Ingrid Bergman film the following year, to an animated feature released in 1997 to the subsequent stage musical two decades later, which arrived at the Kravis Center this week.
Although the show’s authors – the songwriting teams of Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty, as well as the late Terrence McNally, its book writer – do what they can to erase the musical’s lineage to a cartoon, the production’s prime asset is its scenic projections, some of the more spectacular of which are animated.
As with all versions of the story, Anastasia the musical revolves around Anya, a teenage orphan streetsweeper in St. Petersburg. Hazy about her own past, she falls in with a couple of con men, Dmitry and Vlad, who persuade her to pose as the long-lost Anastasia and travel with them to Paris to collect the Romanov treasury.
Gone, fortunately, are a cartoonish villain with supernatural powers, Rasputin, and his talking bat sidekick. In their place, though, McNally has come up with a new antagonist, a revolutionary named Gleb, who is intent on assassinating Anya.
Russian history plays a minor role in the narrative, though the musical is a bit more political than the animated film. McNally could never have known that a line he wrote at least five years ago – for its actions, “Russia has damned itself to eternity” – would seem so relevant to today’s headlines, and would garner such audience applause at Wednesday night’s opening performance.
Flaherty and Ahrens, Tony Award winners for their anthem-heavy Ragtime, add a dozen or so new numbers to their film songs, though the lilting “Once Upon a December,” the jaunty “Learn To Do It” and the power ballad “Journey to the Past,” now the first act closer, remain the score’s standouts.
Director Darko Tresnjak (whose original staging is recreated for this national tour by Sarah Hartmann) moves the story, with its multinational locales, along efficiently. In this, he is assisted mightily by the projections designed by Aaron Rhyne, particularly a perspective-shifting train ride from St. Petersburg to Paris and a ghostly evocation of Anya’s dead ancestors.
The cast is anchored ably by Kyla Stone as diminutive-but-spunky Anya, who has lung power to spare to render the show’s vocal demands very capably. Bryan Seastrom is aptly caddish as con man Vlad, though a second act tangent focusing on his wooing of the dowager empress’s secretary (Madeline Raube) slows the show’s momentum considerably. Gerri Weagraff is a welcome regal presence as the empress and Sam McLellan is a bit bland as Anya’s love interest Dmitry, but that does not stop the tween girls in the audience from swooning over their first kiss.
In addition to the “what if” that propels Anastasia’s storyline, there is also the matter of “is she or isn’t she.” As hard as Dmitry and Vlad work to turn Anya into a credible Anastasia, there are just enough facts she knows that they didn’t teach her to keep us in suspense over her identity. There is also just enough of My Fair Lady’s ragamuffin-to-princess arc to satisfy the believers in us. And while Anastasia is not a top-shelf show, its creators could teach the Disney organization a thing or two about transforming an animated film into a Broadway show.
ANASTASIA, Kravis Center Dreyfoos Hall, 701 Okeechobee Blvd., West Palm Beach, Through Sunday, March 13. $113-$308. 561-832-7469 or visit www.kravis.org.