Setting foot in McCrary Theatre for a new production by the Department of Performing Arts is nothing if not intriguing.
In the last calendar year, the stage has been home to a number of characters — struggling bohemian artists in New York’s Lower East Side; a tribe of politically active hippies; and now, in “She Loves Me,” a group of employees at a parfumerie in 1930s Hungary.
It’s a far cry from “Rent” and “Hair,” two high-energy rock musicals that have recently graced the McCrary stage. But “She Loves Me,” this year’s spring musical running until Feb. 12, compensates with a cast that breathes new life into its characters.
The musical follows the blossoming love between Georg Nowack (senior Adam Kaplan) and Amalia Balash (senior Emilie Renier), two seemingly incompatible employees who do not realize they have been one another’s pen pal for quite some time. Recent adaptations of the musical include the 1998 film “You’ve Got Mail,” starring Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan.
Though the themes included in “She Loves Me” are relatable and timeless, the show has admittedly never attained the pop culture status of other musicals. In its initial stint on Broadway, “She Loves Me” ran for just 302 performances.
But Elon’s interpretation of the musical has a synergy that makes one wonder why the musical is not still running on Broadway today. The plot is simple enough, but it is quite clear that “She Loves Me” contains a number of moving parts that must work in perfect tandem in order to be successful.
To overlook the pitch-perfect casting of “She Loves Me” would be doing the production an enormous disservice. Kaplan and Renier lead a cast of characters that are as quirky as they are engaging, right down to junior Anthony Bruno’s turn as a demanding waiter at the Café Imperiale. It is a production that relies heavily on comedic timing and physical humor, neither of which are absent for too long in any given scene.
The show is not infallible, of course. Muffled microphones and unpredictable scenery mishaps fall on a list of items that momentarily force us out of the story and back into the knowledge that this is simply a production.
But by the time intermission approaches, it is hard to remind oneself this story is fiction. The ensemble provides us with such wonderfully colorful characters, whose personal lives quickly become as important to us as our own. “She Loves Me” is nothing short of irresistible, and it is largely due to the charming men and women on stage, who welcome us as if we are old friends.