Garland, TX – Staging a musical is no small task at Lakeview Centennial High School. The entire side of the school where the auditorium lives is being torn apart, expanded and reimagined, which would have been reason enough to just pack it in this year. Determined to give her graduating seniors a show, director Holly Stone chose a musical which would not only fit the aptly named Little Theater on the opposite side of the school, but also stretch her students and their audience in ways that could hardly have been anticipated at the onset of the project.
“The show had to be small enough to fit the venue, but I also wanted a show with lots of emotion that would push my performers to dig deep and find a range they hadn’t been asked to show before,” Stone tells the Garland Gazette. “I also wanted a show that had a happy ending, because we have enough negativity and sadness in the world already.”
“The Spitfire Grill” fit the bill in every way, and while Stone did not watch the 1996 film that inspired the musical, she knew it was not a widely known show that would show off her students’ abilities in a way that might impress Broadway Dallas, which was scheduled to adjudicate the production. Much like the movie, the stage show did not disappoint.
When the lights come up, Percy Talbott is sitting in prison, singing about freedom in a way that immediately called to mind Maya Angelou’s caged bird. Angelou’s poem is about resiliency in the face of oppression, and senior Brooklyn Lee’s brilliant portrayal of the truly transformational character turns out to be the very living, breathing embodiment of resiliency.
“I didn’t watch the movie because I wanted to find the character within myself,” says Lee, who was performing in her third and final musical as a member of Lakeview’s Theater Troupe 753. “Everything we’ve done before has either been dark comedy or just straight comedy. This musical does have bits of comedy in it, but it’s a very dark show that pushed me to show a range of emotion I’d never shown to an audience before. To bring them along as I show emotion like what it feels like to cry in my bedroom after a bad breakup was something I’d never been asked to do before.”
Percy does, indeed, go through a wide range of emotions, but she turns out to be exactly what the small town of Gilead, Wisconsin, where she chooses to land after five years in prison. She carries with her a magazine article describing the beauty of fall colors along Copper Creek. When she gets off the bus in the middle of the night and is greeted by the town sheriff, she finds that the gray of winter has set in, and the temperature of the residents of the small, struggling town is just as cold as the weather.
Senior Josh Camot portrays Sheriff Joe Sutter, who also had to do some soul searching to find the range for this, his 19th show at LCHS.
“This is the first show we’ve done in a while where I’ve really had to spend some time thinking about where I wanted the character to go and how to get him there,” says Camot. “Without that I couldn’t have owned him and given him the life he deserved. We usually do comedies, so this was a cool new challenge for me.”
After an extremely chilling reception, Percy begins to warm her new environment, opening up little by little to the people around her. As she does so, they, in turn, start to open up as well and gradually she unlocks the reasons for Gilead’s dour outlook. Hannah Ferguson, elderly owner of the Spitfire Grill and mother of a legendary local hero, has lost her husband, her son and much of her humanity as she takes the stage and takes Percy under her wing.
Ironically, portraying Hannah was freshman Riley Ingram, who had been taken under the wings of the senior leads as the lone freshman among them. She wasn’t exactly unprepared, having won Best Actress twice in UIL One-Act Play competition as an 8th grader at the Classical Center at Brandenburg Middle School. Still, performing with seniors had the potential to be an intimidating experience.
“Playing the oldest character in this show definitely pushed me because I was working with a bunch of seniors who were already inducted thespians,” says Ingram. “At first it was a little scary knowing how high the standard was, but once I got to know them and we developed chemistry, reaching their level didn’t seem so hard and being on stage with them just felt natural. Brooklyn didn’t sugar coat the amount of work I was going to have to put in, so she pushed me because she saw my potential and it really helped.”
Hannah is eventually won over by Percy, Hannah’s nephew Caleb, portrayed impressively by senior Anderson Johnson, was not easily impressed.. Even as Percy starts to be the very balm that Gilead needed, Caleb remains highly suspicious and distrustful. Seeing the transformation of his previously browbeaten and cowering wife pushes Caleb to uncover Hannah’s past.
“This was a whole new experience for me because it’s my first time taking a real theater class,” says senior Ruby Galicia, who plays Caleb’s wife Shelby. “I watched the movie a few times to get a sense of the character and I had to really get inside my head and into my thoughts to bring Shelby to life. I was in a show last year, but I was just in the ensemble, so there have been challenges for me and sometimes I get mad at myself for missing something, but you know the show keeps going and you have to push through it. It’s like real life and it’s been an incredibly powerful experience for me. My passion in life is for telling stories, so to have this opportunity before I graduate, playing a lead role, has been incredible.”
By the time Caleb discovers that Percy was in jail for murder, Shelby has already learned the heartbreaking story and loses patience with her husband for the first time in a true turning point in the play. The bitterness Caleb feels because a stranger has redeemed the town he was trying to redeem himself finally starts to lift and the last barrier to Percy’s acceptance falls away.
Percy sees the “Colors of Paradise” in Gilead, and her vision becomes infectious. Hannah starts to see her as a daughter, Shelby sees her as her first true friend and Sheriff Sutter falls in love with her. The people around Shelby start to see their lives through new eyes, with new meaning, and the promise of that previously caged bird’s redemption is realized.
As the lights came up on the final song, there wasn’t a dry eye in the house. The cast were crying in and out of character, with many knowing it’s their final song at LC and the rest realizing that a show which challenged them in new and special ways was over. The audience, who became citizens of the town through the ingenious use of stagecraft in the intimate venue, couldn’t help but cry right along with the cast and crew.
It will be several weeks before the LC theater troupe finds out how Broadway Dallas rated their performances, but there’s no question that “The Spitfire Grill” was a rousing success for those who participated in the production and those who came to join in. From directors Holly Stone and Robert Aprea to musical director Da’On “B-Chat” Boulanger-Chatman and musicians John and Brenda Whitlow, the LC Theater team brought a dream to life for their students. The show marks the end of an era in some ways, as the performance space will soon be torn down, but like Percy did for Gilead, “The Spitfire Grill” will no doubt inspire the rebirth of the program when construction of the new fine arts wing is complete in 2026.
Bill Ingram is a professional writer and college professor with a passion for all things theater.
