Little Women The Broadway Musical seems very much at home out at Rosebud where it will be playing until Aug. 31. It’s a story of the importance of family and of faith and resilience, all themes that play so well in the little opera house theatre in this cozy prairie town.
This musical is yet another stage adaptation of Louisa May Alcott’s of the four March sisters growing up in a small town in Massachusetts during the American Civil War while their father is serving as a chaplain for the Union Army. This version by Allan Knee, Mindi Dickstein and Jason Howland could easily be called Little Woman because it is primarily the story of how Jo March became a writer. Her sisters, Meg, Amy and Beth are not nearly as well fleshed out as Jo, and their trials and tribulations are used to advance Jo’s story rather than to give any of them a true character arc.
It’s fortunate indeed that Cassia Schmidt, who plays Jo, is such a commanding, multitalented performer. She has the voice, the acting skills, and the stage presence to take control of every scene she’s in. She plays Jo as a rebel rather than a tomboy.
Jo wants to be a writer, not the wife and mother that society dictates. As Jo’s solo at the end of the first act says, very loud and very clear, she wants to be someone astonishing, not someone ordinary. The song says as much about Schmidt as it does about Jo.
It’s up to Jocelyn Hoover Leiver, who plays the oldest sister Meg, to show the traditional values young women e.
