Peak Performances resurrects ‘Queen of the Mist,’ memorable musical about a grandiose dreamer

CHRISTOPHER DUGGAN

Mary Testa, center, and cast members of “Queen of the Mist.”

The 20th century has just begun, Theodore Roosevelt is president, and Annie Edson Taylor, a 63-year-old former schoolteacher, is following through on the worst idea ever. In an attempt to save herself from poverty, she will ride over Niagara Falls in a barrel. If she survives — a big if — surely fame and fortune will follow. No one, of either gender, has pulled off this feat before. And if she dies … well, she’ll take that chance. As the character based on her in Michael John LaChiusa’s musical “Queen of the Mist” says, “everybody dies eventually.”

Through good planning, and quite a bit of luck, Taylor pulls off this nearly impossible feat, suffering a bump on head but, otherwise, “nary a bruise,” she says in the musical. (Ironically, she sustained this minor injury when the barrel was being opened.) But the next part of her plan turns out to be more difficult. Fame and fortune does not follow — Taylor was not a great public speaker, and people soon lost interest in her story, anyway — and she dies, nearly 20 years later, more or less as penniless as she was before she took the plunge.

LaChiusa — a five-time Tony nominee for “The Wild Party,” “Marie Christine” and “Chronicle of a Death Foretold” — premiered “Queen of the Mist” Off-Broadway in 2011, with three-time Tony nominee Mary Testa (“On the Town,” “42nd Street” “Oklahoma”) as Taylor. And Testa is reprising the role in the musical-in-concert version that Peak Performances is currently presenting at The Kasser Theater at Montclair State University, with frequent LaChiusa collaborator Kirsten Sanderson directing.

This is a musical that demands a larger-than-life performance by its leading lady. And Testa provides exactly that in this thoroughly enjoyable production. The supporting actors are very good, too, including George Abud as Taylor’s flawed but sympathetic manager (Abud’s warm singing voice really helps convince us of the character’s good intentions), Erin Davie as both Taylor’s loving but exasperated sister and an airheaded drunk who impersonates her at a speaking engagement (most of the actors play multiple roles), and Klea Blackhurst as prohibitionist Carrie Nation, whom Taylor opens for, on the speaking circuit. While they are both waiting for the event to begin, Nation treats her with withering condescension, and Taylor stews for a moment before characteristically bursting out in anger, singing “Don’t pretend, my lofty friend/That you’ve some higher cause to defend … You want the green” — i.e., money — “I want the green/So let’s make the green.”

LaChiusa’s songs are catchy and clever, at times, but soar when they need to reflect Taylor’s ambitions. And they are always true, stylistically, to the time frame of the action. (Taylor may decry the “seamy vulgarities” of ragtime music, but there is indeed a ragtime flavor to some of the songs.)

This production features a cast of seven and a seven-piece orchestra. The actors hold scripts in their hands, but often don’t even look at them. Beyond that, there isn’t a huge difference between the experience of watching this musical-in-concert, and what you might experience watching any other musical. It’s not a lavish production, certainly, but there is staging, and costumes, and well-crafted projections (designed by Sanderson) that add a lot to the proceedings

At the start of the musical, Taylor displays a belief in herself that is so extreme you have to wonder if it’s misguided. “There is greatness in me, time will bear it out,” she sings in her rousing opening number. She seizes on the Niagara Falls stunt without hesitation, yet Testa convincingly shows a flash of fear when it is time to actually make the jump.

Act 1 ends with the jump (which is not actually depicted, just like we never see the barrel, which is nicknamed “Queen of the Mist” before Taylor takes on that moniker herself). And then Act II is devoted, mostly, to Taylor’s enduring, post-stunt hardships and humiliations. But in the closing number, LaChiusa wraps it all up, quite effectively, with a touch a mysticism and a sense of uplifting resolution.

“Queen of the Mist” is an adventurous work, but not in a daunting or inaccessible way. The tunes are hummable, the jokes land, the story will draw you in. And — in regard to its central character — LaChiusa, Testa and everyone else involved have succeeded in giving this grandiose, quintessentially American dreamer a form of immortality.

Remaining performances of “Queen of the Mist” will take place at The Kasser Theater at Montclair State University, Feb. 22 at 8 p.m. and Feb. 23 at 3 p.m. Visit peakperfs.org/events.