‘The Fantasticks’ Shines Bright in Ojai

Ojai Performing Arts Theater’s twinkling new production The Fantasticks is a magic box of a play: a musical parody about love in all its seasons.

The opening number will be familiar to many: “Try to remember the kind of September…” The narrator, a Spanish bandit known as El Gallo (celebrated Broadway singer Douglas Ladnier, bringing an extraordinary, goose-pimpling baritone), invites us to imagine ourselves back to our first love and what that felt like.

The backdrop is the swirling, liminal space where fairytale meets reality and is thus ripe for comedy both tender and broad. El Gallo presents us with two fathers, Hucklebee (Richard Kuhlman) with his 20-year-old son, Matt (Brooks Hope); and Bellomy (Marcus Kettles) with his 16-year-old daughter, Luisa (Abigail Rose Christensen)