Archive: Arts & Entertainment

Lansing High School actors have been polishing their Scottish brogues as they prepare for the March 5th opening of Lerner and Lowe's classic musical Brigadoon.  The play depicts a magical Scottish village that appears for only one day every hundred years.  To the villagers each century seems like one night.  Two lost American tourists, Tommy Albright and Jeff Douglas stumble upon the village on that one special day, taking a liking to villagers Fiona McLaren and Meg Brockie.


Complications arise as relationships in the town clash, and Tommy begins to rethink his committment to his 20th century fiance as his attraction to Fiona grows.  But staying with Fiona will mean a big sacrifice.  200 years prior the local parish pastor prayed to God to make the village disappear, except for one day per century.  Visitors may stay, but only if they have fallen in love with a villager, and of course once you stay you will wake up the next morning in the next century.  And the village will disappear forever if one of its residents leave its boundaries.


Meanwhile Harry Beaton is madly in love with Fiona's sister Jean, who is about to marry Charlie Dalrymple.  When he can't have her he threatens to leave Brigadoon.  A chase ensues, at the end of which Harry is found dead.


When the time comes for Brigadoon to disappear again, the two Americans don't go with it.  Tommy plans to stay, but Jeff can't believe he would give up everything for a girl he just met that day.  Tommy is conflicted, and finally decides he cannot stay.

But it is a decision he comes to regret, as we learn when he meets Jeff in a New York Bar four months later.  He calls off his engagement to Jane, and he and Jeff return to Scotland, hoping against hope that a miracle will take him back to Fiona, his true love.


You'll have to see how it turns out at Lansing Middle School Auditorium, March 5th through 8th.  The 1947 musical includes such classics as 'Almost Like Being in Love' and 'The Heather on the Hill.' 

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