Great White Waynesville

First, see the show info below. Dial the number. Make your reservation. I’ll wait.

Haywood Arts Regional Theatre’s production of john & jen is a stunner, with actors Melodie Galloway and Mark Jones delivering nonpareil vocal performances. The show is staged in Waynesville’s Performing Arts Center in the tiny Feichter Studio, a setting that heightens the emotional intimacy and power of the performance.

In the aftermath, one can’t help thinking: “They deserve a bigger stage.” As in Midtown Manhattan.

The 1995 musical by award-winning composer Andrew Lippa and lyricist Tom Greenwald tells of Jen and two Johns. In the first act, she is the six-years-older sister, greeting the birth of a little brother. The pair grow up under the thumb of an abusive father until their separate escapes: she to New York and college, he to the Navy and Vietnam. In Act Two, Jen is a new, and soon-to-be-single, mother, greeting the birth of her son—her brother’s namesake. Held to an almost impossible ideal, the son grapples with personal identity in the absence of a father and finally, reluctantly, departs for Columbia University, held in his mother’s love even as she nudges him from the nest.

All three roles require believable transitions from young childhood to adulthood, and Jones, whose two Johns each run that gamut, is particularly adept at portraying pouty-faced or beamish childhood. He is at his best as an actor in two of the lighter scenes, copy-catting his older sister and leaving for a first summer at camp. The direction and choreography of the camp segment, in particular, gives Jones ample range to display his talent.

While both performers, in solo or duet, sing superbly, Galloway’s role demands the greatest emotional and vocal range. She delivers. From quietly tender evocation of sisterly and motherly love to struggles with family relationships to wrenching portrayal of heartache and loss, her performance equals any this reviewer has seen in more than two decades of theater-going in WNC.

The pair are familiar to HART patrons. Galloway’s starring roles at HART include leads in Oklahoma!, Carousel, A Little Night Music, Children of Eden, and Into the Woods. Jones has played leading roles in Ragtime, Little Shop of Horrors, and The Full Monty.  In addition, a full chamber ensemble turns in nuanced instrumental support. 

Art O’Neil, a first-time director, also has a deep acting history at HART, having performed in 20 or more shows here over the past 15 years. “In a play this personal and a setting this intimate, the audience feels every nuance,” he says. “There is no room to break from character—you are ‘on’ the whole time.”

A worthy debut, indeed.