Theater review: An imperfect but fresh ‘Anne of Green Gables’ at Goodspeed offers a modern perspective on a classic

A bold new version of the farm-fresh children’s classic “Anne of Green Gables” at Goodspeed Opera House reinterprets the story’s main relationships, adds some kicky dancing and a lot of chairs, and promotes a beautiful basic theme of love and trust.

This “Anne of Green Gables — A New Musical” has a modern attitude, a modern style and a fervent desire to remove this story from the bucolic countryside environment, frilly dresses and nostalgic old-world manners that have confined it for so long.

The children’s classic began as a novel by L.M. Montgomery, published in 1908. Montgomery wrote seven other books about Anne Shirley and her adventures at Avonlea and elsewhere. The characters she created have fueled several dozen TV, movie and radio adaptations. There have been several stage musical versions before this one, including one in the Prince Edward Island region of Canada where the book is set that entered the Guinness Book of World Records for “longest running annual musical theater production.”

The Goodspeed is billing its version as a world premiere, though the show had an earlier production at the Rev Theater in Auburn, New York, in 2018 with the same director Jenn Thompson, choreographer Jennifer Jancuska, scenic designer Wilson Chin, and music supervisor Amanda Morton. (The music director who leads the band here is Matthew Smedal.)

The show’s book and lyrics are by Matte O’Brien, who writes in an essay in the playbill that “growing up as a queer person in a conservative town, I never felt that I belonged.” He says he felt an affinity with the character of Anne Shirley: “She was somehow ‘other,’ like me — like so many of us. We’ve all had the feeling of standing outside a group or community, looking in, longing to be recognized, to have our value acknowledged, to connect.”

That’s a fair assessment of the guiding principles of this adaptation. It focuses on the reactions of Anne Shirley (played by Juliette Redden) as she is demeaned, challenged, humbled and generally misunderstood of the townsfolk of Avonlea, where she has been brought as an orphan to work a farm owned by the non-nonsense Marilla Cuthbert (Sharon Catherine Brown) and her brother Matthew (D.C. Anderson).

One of Anne Shirley’s key friendships is with Diana Barry (Michelle Veintimilla), whose aspirations to have a career are derailed by her mother’s insistence to marry and raise a family. O’Brien’s script reframes the Anne/Diana relationship as potentially lesbian, adding romantic tension to the scenes where the young women are kept apart from each other.

Fixating on raw, varied and often conflicting realistic real-world emotions means that some simplistic stereotyped characters for the original book — the “beautiful” girl, the vain handsome boy and various domineering and closed-minded adults — have room to grow. Several unlikely characters get to sing about self-discovery and regrets. These numbers include the soulful “Marilla’s Song,” a stunning reminder of the musical and dramatic range of Sharon Catherine Brown; and several different revelatory songs for Gilbert Blythe (Pierre Marais), the full-of-himself schoolboy who finds himself smitten with Anne Shirley even though she continually undermines his self-confidence. The rousing “Make a Move,” sung by Aurelia Williams (as the snooty elder Rachel Lynde) is a decidedly upbeat showstopper about following one’s dreams that works its magic with powerful R&B belting rather than sing-along razzmatazz.

As with O’Brien’s script and lyrics, composer Matt Vinson makes a lot of cool choices with his score. Scenes and songs that seem to be shaping up as lovey-dovey can turn funny or angry. Tempos speed up or slow down. Expectations are challenged.

The sparse set and choreographic style are at odds with a lot of what has traditionally transpired on the Goodspeed stage. Chin’s scenic design is abstract, with bare rough wood, a revolving oddly shaped central platform and a whole lot of chairs. A preponderance of chairs can be seen as a recent theater trend (exemplified by the Broadway revival of “The Color Purple”) but also hearkens back to plays about isolation and social confusion from the likes of Samuel Beckett and Eugene Ionesco.

Likewise, the music does not conform to the accustomed Goodspeed pit orchestra. An eight-piece ensemble, structured more like a pop band than a musical theater orchestra, is situated unseen behind the backdrop onstage rather than in the orchestra pit at the front of the stage. The band plays animatedly and fairly loudly, but it would be an exaggeration to call this a rock musical or even a folk-pop musical as it has been described.

The show’s perspective, its enlightening reprioritizing of some of the plot lines and characters and its invigorating score all help “Anne of Green Gables” stand out as a sharp rethinking of a timeless coming-of-age tale.

But this “Anne of Green Gables” is also exhibiting some growing pains. There are whole scenes where the staging and choreography are simply trying to do anything to provide a visual backdrop to the dialogue. Rather than adding to what’s being discussed, they often detract from it. The dancing is a wonderful showcase for Jancuska’s singular choreographic style, which involves a lot of squatting, knee-bending and elbow-thrusting. But there are many times when it simply doesn’t fit the story or the thoughtful inward-looking tone of Thompson’s direction.

Worse, the show has not found a clear steady voice. It opens with an introductory number sung by Anne about herself, which tries to accomplish way too many things at once. The song, “Waiting,” offers a picture of Anne as an excitable, headstrong, upbeat person. It also delves into her backstory as an orphan. Then it abruptly becomes a song about the general concept of seeking a home. It’s a lot to take in.

Shortly after that overstuffed opening number, Anne is suddenly no longer telling her own story. Chorus members start reciting a third-person narrative. Later, it gets first-person again. The lack of a consistent voice can get confusing and exasperating. O’Brien and Vinson clearly know the story they want to tell, but won’t decide on the clearest way to tell it.

The show’s best songs are the ones where characters verbalize their internal monologues, the kind of stand-alone universal expressions of love or anguish that Broadway vocalists like to put in their cabaret shows. The worst songs are the ones that have to handle exposition, the ones that need to explain what Anne does next while working in clunky names like “Cuthbert.”

“Anne of Green Gables” is still very much a work in progress, much like its forceful and fallible heroine. What it has going for it, again just like Anne, is a determination to honor individuality, stand up to discrimination and show the positive possibilities of an affirming, open-minded society. Here’s hoping it finds its way.

“Anne of Green Gables: A New Musical” by Matte O’Brien and Matt Vinson runs through Sept. 4 at the Goodspeed Opera House, 6 Main Street, East Haddam. Performances are Wednesday and Thursday at both 2:30 and 7:30 p.m., Friday at 8 p.m., Saturday at 3 and 8 p.m. and Sunday at 2 and 6:30 p.m. Tickets are $30-$80. goodspeed.org.

Christopher Arnott can be reached at carnott@courant.com.