Anastasia @ AT&T Performing Arts Center

Photos by Evan Zimmerman for MurphyMade

—Jill Sweeney

Never have I felt more catered to as a demographic than at Saturday night’s performance of Anastasia: The New Broadway Musical, presented by ATTPAC at the Winspear Opera House. The audience was almost exclusively made up of women who, like me, were tweens when the 1997 animated film that “inspired” the musical was released, though many were bookended in the seats by patient husbands and enthusiastic daughters. I spotted not only an abundance of tiaras, but more than one Anastasia cosplay in the crowd; having myself seen the movie eleven times while it was in theaters (thank heaven for my patient parents, my equally enthusiastic best friend, and the local dollar theater).

In other words, I’m hardly one to judge.

And I’m pleased to say that the musical manages to capture much of the charm of the original film while grounding it more in the political realities of the time, and excising the supernatural elements that sometimes bogged down the movie. Anastasia is family-friendly in the best sense—that there really is something for everyone to enjoy in this musical.

It's 1927 in St. Petersburg—excuse me, Leningrad—and things are a bit gloomy 10 years after the Russian Revolution that saw the death of Czar Nicholas II, along with his wife and children. But there’s a rumor humming through the bread lines: could the Grand Duchess Anastasia, the Czar’s youngest daughter, have somehow survived? Catching wind of this, con men Dmitry (Willem Butler) and Vlad (Bryan Seastrom) decide on a new scheme: find a girl who can pull off a convincing “Anastasia,” take her to Paris to “reunite” with her only living relative, the Dowager Empress (Gerri Weagraff), and graciously accept the reward money for her granddaughter’s safe return.

Enter street-sweeper Anya (Veronica Stern), who comes to Dmitry and Vlad looking for travel papers to, whodathunk it, Paris. Anya can’t remember anything before waking up in a hospital as a child, so the two men take her under their collective wing to teach her how to be a convincing Grand Duchess. Anya is good at mimicking royalty—a little too good, in fact, leaving the two men to wonder if they’ve stumbled across the genuine article. As romance blooms between Dmitry and Anya, can he and Vlad protect her from the Bolshevik General Gleb (Christian McQueen), tasked with eliminating the threat to Russia’s new order—and help Anya/Anasasia find her place in the world?

With a smartly reconceived book from the late, lamented playwright Terrence McNally, pulling both from the 1997 film and the 1956 Ingrid Bergman movie of the same name, and with Stephen Flaherty and Lynn Ahrens impressively expanding their score from the film, the musical expands on the best elements of all that. Paired with sumptuous costuming from designer Linda Cho and (mostly) effective projection designs from Aaron Rhyne, it’s a visual and aural feast.

But all the effects in the world aren’t enough if the cast isn’t up to snuff, especially the main romantic pairing. Stern is very winning in the lead role, bringing both grit and vulnerability to the character, along with a soaring soprano eminently suited to belting out the show-stopping “Journey to the Past” and the iconic “Once Upon a December.” She and Butler have the requisite ‘30s-screwball-comedy energy the pair needs, and Butler’s voice really gets a chance to shine in Act II, especially in the new ballad, “In a Crowd of Thousands”. And the comedic secondary couple of the piece—Seastrom and Madeline Raube as the Dowager Empress’ lady-in-waiting Countess Lily—had the audience roaring, especially in Act II’s raunchy “The Countess and the Common Man.”

The biggest surprise of the night for me was Christian McQueen’s Gleb, a new character created, presumably, to fill the “antagonist” role that the zombified Rasputin played in the animated film. He’s an intriguingly layered character, given a little of the childhood connection with Anastasia that was originally assigned to Dmitry (if darker in tone), whose connection with the grand duchess has been reconceived. There’s a whiff of Inspector Javert to his dogged but tortured pursuit of Anya, for whom he’s developed tender feelings, but the character might need more stage time to feel fully realized. In any case, McQueen is a magnetic stage presence with a resonant voice you feel down to your toes. If the final confrontation between Gleb and Anastasia seems a bit rushed, no matter: McQueen makes it feel earned.

It’s a shame this show only passed through for a handful of performances, as it’s sure to charm both newbies and devotees of the original film. We’ll have to hope it swings through again one day.

WHEN: Closed April 8th

WHERE: Winspear Opera House

WEB: For upcoming events, see the calendar at attpac.org