If you still want to catch the current run of My Ántonia at Theater Latté Da, you should buy your ticket now. As in, the second you finish reading this. The brand-new musical based on Willa Cather’s 1918 novel is a hit, and the shows left in its extended run are either sold out or close to it.
If you do miss out, though, don’t fret too much. I have a feeling we’ll see My Ántonia again; not just as an encore presentation at Latté Da, but on a much bigger stage. Just as Cather’s novel has been described as one of the great American novels, this stirring show has the potential to be one of the next great American musicals. I don’t think Broadway is out of the question — that is, if the creative team isn’t afraid to burn down some patches to encourage a heartier emotional harvest in the next inevitable production.
Those who read this literary classic as part of their grade-school curriculum will immediately recognize the story as it’s been reconstructed for the stage. We still have our 10-year-old orphaned protagonist Jimmy Burden (Maddox Tabalba), who is shipped from genteel Virginia to frontier Nebraska, where his grandparents raise him on their farmstead. He still meets 13-year-old Ántonia Shimerda (Lillian Hochman), the magnetic daughter of a family of ill-fated Bohemian immigrants who are also newly arrived in the settlement. Their fateful childhood on the harsh and honeyed prairie at the turn of the 19th century is still introduced by the older “James” Burden (Tom Reed), who has never forgotten “my Ántonia.”
The most consequential change has to do with who grown-up James, now a divorced lawyer, is telling his story to: Willa Cather (Em Adam Rosenberg), who we first meet drowning her sorrows at a bar. As you may remember, the novel begins with an unnamed woman talking to James about Ántonia before the narrative starts; but in this musical, the woman is explicitly Willa herself, and they both serve as the narrators of the story. As the two youngsters grow up and go their separate ways, Willa peppers James with questions about Ántonia, and he explains all the ways she thrilled, vexed, and continues to beguile him.
When the creators of the show remember that is the heart of the story — the transcendent relationship between Ántonia and Jim, not Cather herself (even if Jim is a stand-in for her) — you can feel this musical reverberate around the audience, like a gust of wind through the wide-open prairie.
Speaking of the creators, director Jessie Austrian, book writer Noah Brody, and composers Kate Kilbane and Dan Moses (known as The Kilbanes) are all billed as co-conceivers. You can feel that cohesiveness in the ease with which this dense novel flows through just two and a half hours; in the way the actors who play Jim and Ántonia at different ages interact with their older and younger selves on stage; and in this earworm-laden indie-folk score, which feels both historically appropriate and utterly contemporary. (Side note: Hey Theater Latté Da, I’ll donate if you want to crowdfund a cast album — and it’ll help build buzz for the future Broadway production!)
Yes, Jim and Ántonia are the soul of this story (six of the actors in the twelve-person cast play one of them at some point). Their struggles to build a home in a foreign land, even when the ground seems infertile, and to hold tight to each other, even as life wrenches them in different directions, are the handlebars the audience clings to. But this musical is also about the importance of community and the resilience of immigrants in America, especially women. Those themes are just as fully formed, thanks in large part to a hardworking cast who are all tasked with multiple roles.
Spencer Chandler is pitch perfect as the wistful Mr. Shimerda, who has brought his wife (Emily Gunyou Halaas), son (James Rodriguez), and daughter Ántonia from Bohemia to Nebraska in search of a better life. He’s a devoted father squeezing every drop of life out of himself in service of his family, and The Kilbanes capture that beautifully in the duet “Keep You Warm.” In the song, Hochman as Young Ántonia sings about sheltering a cricket from the cold, while Mr. Shimerda sings about sheltering his “cricket,” his Ántonia; Chandler makes this already heartbreaking tune one of the highlights of the show. Among the rest of the cast, Bradley Greenwald also makes a strong impression in a short time, imbuing Jimmy’s grandfather with a magnanimous resolve without relying on farmer clichés.
The other highlights for me are the two younger pairs of Jims and Ántonias. As the youngest duo, Tabalba and Hochman expertly hook the audience with the other best song of the night, “Name, What Name,” a sweet duet in which Jim teaches Ántonia English. As the teenage duo, the galvanizing Will Dusek and Sara Masterson reprise “Name, What Name” to end Act 1; by that time, the sweetness has been mixed with sweat and despair and regret and hope until the outwardly simple song becomes a heady draught that makes you believe the sky’s the limit for these two, and for the musical.
In Act 2, Jim and Ántonia must navigate new jobs, new relationships, new cities, and the pitfalls that await them at each. Here, the creators of the musical run into their own pitfall: how do you end a story when the two main characters go their own ways, Jim to college and Ántonia to a questionable marriage?
The route they’ve chosen is to shift importance to other characters. First, they give Jim a duet with a girlfriend named Lena (Anna Hashizume), the song “Sing to Me, Oh Muse,” which feels like The Kilbanes tried to shoehorn another perspective into what should be a solo. More consequentially, that song is then reprised for the finale, with Willa given the final word in the musical. I won’t give away anything more specific than that.
Conceptually, this seems to make sense. If Jim is a stand-in for Willa, and the musical is celebrating women of the frontier, why shouldn’t Willa get the final say? But as an audience member sitting in the Ritz Theater, this framing landed with a thud. I just spent the last two hours wrapped up in Jim and Ántonia’s world, so for me, suddenly making it the Willa Cather show sucked all the life out of the room. There’s a reason why the author didn’t insert herself at the end of the novel.
As it stands now, Theater Latté Da’s My Ántonia is a good adaptation of a canonical novel. With some significant changes, this show has the potential to become a canonical musical in its own right.
Full Transparency: I bought my own ticket to My Ántonia.
My Ántonia
Theater Latté Da
The Ritz Theater
345 13th Ave. NE
Minneapolis, MN 55413
June 3 – July 19
Read more and buy tickets here
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