The Enchanted Bookshop Musical comes to life

Let me tell you, publishing a musical has been quite the educational experience. And one of the things I've learned is this: It takes a whole lot longer to rehearse and mount a musical than a play (well, duh).

My play The Enchanted Bookshop was first published in July 2017 and premiered on September 21. Think about that. A script wasn't even available until July 31, so the group that first produced it--The Orange County Players of Paoli, IN--had to do all of the following in just seven weeks:

• Order a perusal script
• Read the script
• Decide to perform it,
• Pay the licensing fee
• Order performance scripts for the entire cast
• Hold auditions
• Cast the play
• Build the sets and costumes
• Run a full set of rehearsals from first read-through to final dress 

That's pretty impressive.

Musicals, however, need a lot more time. The Enchanted Bookshop Musical came out in July of this year, and it's just now getting its first productions.

And that's okay. Learning the lyrics probably takes a month of rehearsal time. Add choreography, and you've just extended it another month.

Now that the show has had its premiere, other theaters are jumping on the bandwagon. In fact, the musical currently has 27 productions booked for the current school year.

That's a very healthy start. It's not as many productions as the original play got in its first few months of publication, but it's a whole lot more than any of my other plays. So it looks like the musical is going to be a hit as well.

So who gave The Enchanted Bookshop Musical its world premiere? Well, it turned out to be the Arbor Court Anderson Valley Entertainment Center of Lancaster, CA. They haven't posted any photos from their production, however, so I was excited this week when I saw that the second group to perform the musical--Haystack Productions of Beausejour, Manitoba--posted some of theirs.

Of course, the photos don't look any different than the photos from the play (other than the open mouths during the musical numbers!). And that's because the play and the musical have the exact same characters, the same costumes, the same sets.

In fact, all of the dialogue and stage directions from the original script were used as is in the musical. The only change were the eleven songs that were added.

Looking at the photos now, the one thing that really strikes me is the distinctiveness of the costumes. 

When I was first choosing the literary characters that would appear in The Enchanted Bookshop, one of my criteria was to only include characters that are instantly recognizable from their costumes. I didn't want the audience getting distracted trying to figure out who was who. That's why there's no Anne of Green Gables or Caddie Woodlawn in the play (though I really, really wanted to include a Canadian character).

Anyway, as the photo at the top of this post shows, I think I was successful--at least with the guys. The girls, on the other hand, pose a bigger challenge.

We all recognize Dorothy Gale's blue-checked gingham dress, of course (Fun fact: While the ruby slippers were invented for the 1939 MGM film, her iconic clothing came right out of L. Frank Baum's book). But the other two characters are a little harder to place. Need help? That's Pollyanna in the middle and Heidi on the right.

I think the problem is that our image of the six main characters is shaped not by the original books they appeared in but by the movie adaptations of those books, and there hasn't been a movie version of Pollyanna or Heidi in decades. Besides, even when those characters did appear on screen, there wasn't one definitive outfit they were identified with.

Let's face it, male movie heroes don't change their clothes as often as female movie heroes.

Anyway, I love the costumes here. They're very colorful and true to character, so once you're introduced to the characters wearing them, you shouldn't have any trouble keeping them straight. And that's really what's most important here.

So a great big kudos to the costumer designer, the skilled seamstresses and seamsters (?) who made the costumes, and everyone else involved in the production.

You can be proud. Very, very proud.