‘Starmites’

Bucks County Playhouse revives the quirky comic musical.

By: Stuart Duncan

Bucks County Playhouse is staging ‘Starmites’ through May 22.

   Starmites, which is opening a most ambitious season at Bucks County Playhouse in New Hope, Pa., was a dismal failure in New York. It premiered at the end of April 1989 and ran for only 60 performances. In a year of few distinctive productions, it was nominated for a half-dozen Tony Awards, winning none. The current revival suggests why, but at the same time, is great fun, tightly packed with wall-to-wall talent, incredible energy and enough special moments to keep an audience laughing and cheering.
   The plot would seem to have been stolen from almost anything written in the past century. You will find smidgens of The Wizard of Oz, Star Wars and West Side Story as interpreted by Elvis, to mention just a handful. A shy teenager named Eleanor has built a fantasy world around the characters in her formidable comic book collection. Moreover, she imagines herself as the unrecognized super heroine. As such she is drawn into a conflict between Shak Graa, the arch-creep of Chaos (boo-hiss), and The Starmites (yay team!), and especially their heart-throb captain, Spacepunk (double yay team!). It turns out that only Eleanor, the pre-ordained savior of the universe, can save planet Earth from destruction.
   The company at the Playhouse includes many of past years’ favorites: Jessica Bradish (Lucy in Jekyll and Hyde last summer) plays Eleanor with a delicious sense of abandon and a lovely singing voice. Amy Lynn Zanetto (The Scarlet Pimpernel and Smokey Joe’s Café, among many) plays the villainous Diva, and does it with gleeful malevolence. Jacob Thompson, a more-or-less newcomer to Bucks, is a super hero Spacepunk, with a nod to Elvis and perhaps another to Robin Williams.
   Tressa McCallister leads a bevy of racy, bad girls — all with big voices and smaller costumes. Damian Bartolacci spends most of the evening on his haunches as some species of Space Lizard named Trinkulus (think of Caliban from The Tempest and you’ll be close).
   It’s all pretty silly and child-like. But it isn’t childish, and therefore good fun. The music, by Barry Keating, is eclectic; the book, by Keating and Stuart Ross (who brought us Forever Plaid), is bright and chirpy-birdie, and the more you know about global literature, the more fun you will have filling in the blanks. It’s probably a little bit too much for the very young, but teenagers will love it.
Starmites continues at Bucks County Playhouse, 70 S. Main St., New Hope, Pa., through May 22. Performances: Wed.-Thurs. 8 p.m.; Sat. 4, 8 p.m.; Sun. 2 p.m.; May 17, 20, 8 p.m. Tickets cost $22-$24. For information, call (215) 862-2041. On the Web: www.buckscountyplayhouse.com