Goodspeed's The Snow Goose: Honor the Source

Eric Graise, puppeteer Leah Hoffman, Ashlyn Maddox, and the company of The Snow Goose. (Photo: Diane Sobolewski.)

In Paul Gallico’s famous World War II novella The Snow Goose (written in 1941), an injured Canadian snow goose that may have lost her way during a storm brings together a young artist named Philip Rayader who has come to live in a lighthouse in the Great Marsh on England’s Essex coast and a twelve-year-old orphan named Fritha. Philip’s physical deformities – a humpback and one hand twisted like a claw – have made him a source of fear among his neighbors; accustomed to being treated like a pariah, he leads a reclusive life, feeding and caring for the local birds. But when Fritha comes across the goose wounded by a hunter’s bullet not far from the lighthouse, she overcomes her trepidation and, aware of Philip’s work with the birds, brings her to his door and implores him to heal her. He does, with Fritha’s assistance, and gives the bird a home for the winter. When the young girl keeps returning to visit the goose, whom they’ve given the name The Lost Princess for her elegance and regal bearing – and, presumably, because her strange appearance so far from her natural habitat lends her a magical aura – Philip is uncomfortable at first because he understands that Fritha’s community would hardly approve of her seeking out so unwelcome a presence. But because what turns into a friendship between them is focused on the Princess, they are able to transcend his reluctance and hers. The goose flies with the other birds when winter comes, but every spring she returns to the lighthouse. Ten years go by, and Fritha grows into a young woman whose feelings for Philip have blossomed yet become unfathomable to her. War breaks out, and when the local men are exhorted to use their small fishing boats to rescue the soldiers trapped at Dunkirk by the Nazis, Philip is determined to answer the call.

This exquisite small work contains only three main characters, including the Princess; the other members of the Essex community barely come into the story, and when they do they’re portrayed as distant, not aggressive. The narrative is about the unexpectedness and mystery of love: it’s the tale of a love that arrives too late because of circumstances, the most powerful of which, of course, is the war. So it’s also about the complications of heroism. The Snow Goose is a romantic tragedy told in the style and mood of a fairy tale.

Scott Gilmour and Claire McKenzie, whose musical adaptation is currently on display at the Goodspeed Opera House (through October 18), have moved so far away from their source material that, were it not for the basic outline of the plot, the results would be unrecognizable. The stage is crowded with actors (Marshall Pailet’s direction goes for volume rather than clarity), most of whom represent the heroine’s friends and neighbors, who seem to take her association with Philip (Eric Graise) as some kind of tribal disloyalty. When she dares to bring him to a community event, they practically turn into a lynch mob. (Fritha is now called Frith, and played by Ashlyn Maddox.) The elder cousin, Harper (Ally Bonino), who has raised her, is a pathologically possessive fury who gets more stage time than Philip. So does a boy named Wilf (Charlie Webb) who grew up with Frith and expects to marry her in time; he is, naturally, the first soldier Philip saves at Dunkirk – a cheap irony the writers have inserted to remind us that we shouldn’t hate people who don’t look like us. Of course Philip is Black in this version, just so we won’t miss the point. Gilmour and McKenzie have reduced Gallico’s tender, delicate book to a collection of didactic clichés. They don’t seem to care remotely about the story they’re supposed to be committing to the stage – in the final moments of the show we’re told, astonishingly, that The Snow Goose is Wilf’s story.

The music is in the style of English folk, and I did like the balladeer (Sam Sherwood) who narrates the story, and the opening ballad is promising. But there are way too many songs and by act two they begin to sound more or less the same. The close harmony is pretty, but the music director, Adam Souza, whose work at the Goodspeed I almost always praise, has encouraged the singers to belt, and the size of the sound adds to the general overstatement of the production, along with the unimaginative choreography by Misha Shields and the generally amateurish acting, which mostly amounts to making exaggerated faces. Maddox would be fine as Frith if she didn’t push so much vocally; the belting makes her singing shrill. And Graise doesn’t have a strong enough voice to carry his songs. Bonino does, but she overplays every moment she’s on stage, and her second-act solo, “The World Don’t Want to Know,” is sheerly melodramatic. Graise doesn’t make much of an impression as Philip, though I’d put the problems in his performance down to the writing and the way Mallory Kay Nelson, who designed the costumes, and J. Jared Janas and Cassie J. Williams, who supervised hair and make-up, have made him look. He wears dreads that often cloud his face and instead of being burdened with a hump he’s legless, so he has to roam around the stage on a rolling board like Porgy – that is, until he suddenly shows up with legs when he tries to enlist. I guess the idea is supposed to be that he owns a pair of wooden legs but never uses them until he wants to get into the service. But since the script has given us no indication that this is the case until halfway through the show the effect is merely baffling: we wonder if there’s a scene missing.

On the meager plus side are a lovely set by Emmie Finckel and the goose herself, a puppet manipulated by three puppeteers. Every time the Princess comes onstage the musical gets a lift, except when she’s in flight in the sky, at which point the puppet is replaced by an ugly kite that looks as if it has been made out of plastic. I read Gallico’s work only a few days before seeing the show and got quite excited about it because it’s so beautiful and seemed like an ideal idea for a musical. Now I just wish they’d left it alone.

– Steve Vineberg is Distinguished Professor of the Arts and Humanities at College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts, where he teaches theatre and film. He also writes for The Threepenny Review and is the author of three books: Method Actors: Three Generations of an American Acting Style; No Surprises, Please: Movies in the Reagan Decade; and High Comedy in American Movies.