Cast members doubling as the band add a fresh, innovative twist to Garry Marshall Theatre’s captivating revival of the 2001 off-Broadway musical hit The Spitfire Grill.

Like the 1996 Sundance Audience Award-winning film by Lee David Zlotoff on which it is based, James Valcq and Fred Alley’s powerhouse chamber musical transports audiences to Gilead, Wisconsin where a freshly-arrived Percy Talbott (Rachel Sarah Mount) hopes for a new start after the most hard-knock of lives.

Introduced to Spitfire Grill owner Hannah Ferguson (Sarah Saviano) by her parole officer Sheriff Joe Sutter (Erich Schroeder), Percy first finds herself waitressing unfriendly customers suspicious of a stranger in their midst, then making unfortunate attempts at cooking when a broken leg has Hannah temporarily out of service.

It doesn’t help that Hannah’s nephew Caleb (Joey Ruggiero) is the suspicious sort or that gossipy mail carrier Effie (Linda Kerns) soon has townsfolk believing the worst of Percy. (“They say she has tattoos!”)

At least our plucky heroine’s got fellow Spitfire employee, Caleb’s wife Shelby (Ashley Argota), around to provide moral support and a bit of local history. (It seems the entire town lost hope when Hannah’s son Eli went off to fight in Vietnam and never came back.)

No wonder then that Hannah’s been trying to sell the Grill for the past ten years. No wonder, too, that given its less than favorable location far from the nearest major highway, there hasn’t been a single taker so far.

Then one day Percy comes up with the idea of holding a hundred-dollar-an-entry essay contest whose first prize will be the deed to the grill, and before long the town is buzzing about the sackloads of submissions arriving on the Spitfire doorstep, each more heartrending than the next, and the contest to win the Spitfire Grill is going full steam ahead.

Valcq and Alley’s feel-good gem of a book is complemented by Valcq’s catchy bluegrass-folk-pop melodies, making this one musical whose songs you’ll likely hear echoing in your head long after Hannah has determined her grill’s future owner.

Director Dimitri Toscas’ most inspired twist is to dole out Valcq’s orchestrations among company members, with Ruggiero and Schroeder on guitars and mandolin, Kerns on accordion, Nicu Brouillette (in the usually throw-away role of “The Visitor”) on violin, and Saviano on clarinet (playing notes originally written for cello), with a mostly hidden James Lent* tickling the ivories, all of the above under Anthony Zediker’s accomplished musical direction.

It’s an approach that American audiences first saw when Scottish director John Doyle had his Sweeney Todd cast stand in for a traditional pit orchestra, but unlike that 2005 Broadway revival (which seemed more “director’s concept” than actual Sweeney), Toscas’ Garry Marshall Spitfire feels like the real thing. (After all, why wouldn’t Sheriff Joe, Effy, and the rest keep their instruments at hand if only to stave off minuscule-town boredom with music?)

Mount is simply stunning as Appalachian-born-and-bred Percy, scarred by life but willing to give humanity a second chance in Gillead if only they’ll let her, and just wait till the recent Color Purple star solos “Shine” to reach the rafters as JM Montalvo does some of the year’s most dazzling lighting design magic.

Argota, whose starring roles in the considerably more-freewheeling Unauthorized Musical Parody and Lythgoe Family Panto franchises have made her a Southland favorite, gets to play it straight–and beautifully so–as a young wife learning to be her own person, and singing like an angel along the way.

Saviano takes the hard-edged, embittered Hannah and invests her with heart, hope, and gut-wrenching vocals in “Forgotten Lullaby,” Schroeder couldn’t make for a more charming and likable Joe, Ruggiero gives Caleb a rough-hewn sex appeal to make up for his shortcomings in the evolved husband department, and Kerns (who’s played both Effie and Hannah and directed The Spitfire Grill) scores abundant laughs as the busiest of busibodies. (That all of the above deliver the vocal goods to their own instrumental accompaniment is icing on the cake.)

Last but not least, Brouillette not only shows off virtuoso violin chops, in a bit of Tosca brilliance, “The Visitor” uses his instrument to speak words he cannot get his voice to utter,

Scenic designer Tanya Orellana’s wood-hewn set takes us from Hannah’s kitchen to the woods high above Gillead, Michèle Young’s weathered costumes are character-perfect each and every one, properties designer John M. McElveney fills the stage with food-prep paraphernalia and sacks of essay-containing envelopes, and sound designer Robert Arturo Ramirez expertly mixes voices and instruments throughout.

Derek R. Copenhaver is production stage manager. Casting is by Andrew Lynford, CSA. Jonathan Regier understudies Joe, Caleb, and The Visitor.

With its compelling storyline, colorful cast of small-town characters, gorgeous folk-meets-Broadway score, and much-needed message of forgiveness and redemption, The Spitfire Grill is musical theater at its most compelling and transformative.

At Garry Marshall Theatre, it is all that and more.

*Lent plays piano on Fridays and Sundays, Zediker at Wednesday and Thursday performances, and Lauralie Pow on Saturdays

Garry Marshall Theatre, 4252 Riverside Drive, Burbank.
www.GarryMarshallTheatre.org

–Steven Stanley
July 12, 2019
Photos: Aaron Batzdorff

Tags: Fred Alley, Garry Marshall Theatre, James Valcq, Los Angeles Theater Review