A dreamy movie becomes a dream of a stage musical in “Amélie, a New Musical,” the blithe experiment in theatrical magic that opened Friday at Berkeley Repertory Theatre. Wit crackles and charm fills the house, emanating from the book, lyrics and melodies. Director Pam MacKinnon creates a seamless blend of visual, narrative and performance delights. And Samantha Barks inhabits the title role so luminously she might make you forget there was anyone else onstage — if the rest of the cast weren’t perfectly brilliant in turn.
It’s a remarkable achievement, considering what a long shot the idea seemed in the first place. Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s 2001 French film is a romantic comedy principally told through extraordinary cinematography. Playwright Craig Lucas (“Prelude to a Kiss,” “The Light in the Piazza”), composer-lyricist Daniel Messé (principal songwriter for the band Hem) and lyricist Nathan Tysen have excavated the central story and fleshed it out, to focus more strongly on the coming-of-age-through-love tale of a radiant, smart but — emotionally — almost cripplingly shy young woman.
Their Amélie is less of the pixie-ish prankster gamine of Audrey Tautou in the movie — though Barks radiates the mischievous joy she takes in her anonymous efforts to fix the lives of all those around her. As filled out in the book and, especially, songs, she’s more of the woman who’s been yearning for intimacy since childhood with her overly protective but not at all demonstrative parents, brilliantly embodied by John Hickok’s obsessive germophobic Raphael and Alison Cimmet’s by-the-book intellectual Amandine.
The result is a story that grows increasingly captivating, starting from 9-year-old Savvy Crawford’s winningly precocious, imaginative and bright-voiced Young Amélie in a determinedly fantasized happy childhood. And culminating with the slow awakening and awkward wooing of the boyishly quirky photo-collage artist Nino, as played by a magnetic Adam Chanler-Berat, whose bright, vibrant tenor folds lovingly into Barks’ golden tones on their duets.
None of that would work without an Amélie who could command and hold our focus as Tautou did in the film. That doesn’t seem to be even an issue for rising British stage and film (“Les Misérables”) star Barks. Her Amélie enchants with an unassuming charisma and a generosity that brings out the sad, unfulfilled core within her youthful, joy in life, boundless curiosity and broad empathy. And she sings Messé’s bright, folk-inflected melodies with a sweet, full, at times country-western heart.
It probably helps, too, that Lucas tells her story not through her own eyes and fantasies, as in the film. What narrative or commentary is necessary is handled mostly through song and dialogue by the ensemble. In place of the original’s dreamlike and hallucinatory elements, MacKinnon and her designers deploy old- and new-fashioned stagecraft to fantastical ends, from David Zinn’s brightly caricatured costumes to the towering walls of chests, bureaus and armoires of his set, transformed into a cafe or the garrets of Montmartre by deft lighting effects and Peter Nigrini’s cleverly unobtrusive projections.
Set changes are as swift as sleight-of-hand. Choreographer Sam Pinkleton makes the whole production seem light on its toes, transforming everyday actions and gestures into buoyant movement patterns, never more delightfully than in the repetitive, cyclical-rut ensemble of cafe habitues singing “What Am I Waiting For?” ( “I’m waiting for something worth waiting for”). Messé and Tysen’s captivating, eclectic and almost always humor-tinged songs keep the show moving at a swift clip, propelled by musical director Kimberly Grigsby’s terrific eight-piece onstage band.
Clever puppetry helps, too, especially with the tragic deaths of Amélie’s pet fish Fluffy and, yes, her mother. And then there’s the pure old magic of actors inhabiting several parts, as when Cimmet transforms herself from the uptight Amandine into the magnetically funny air hostess Philomene in the cafe where Amélie works. Or another cafe regular, Randy Blair’s oh-so-serious unpublished poet Hipolito, metamorphoses into a hilarious take on Elton John. Trapeze survivor Maria-Christina Oliveras, lovelorn Paul Whitty, saucy Carla Duren and sickly Alyse Alan Louis are outstanding as other cafe denizens, as is Tony Sheldon as the old would-be painter (he paints another copy of the same Renoir every year) who serves as Amélie’s unlikely guardian angel.
With such talents as Lucas, Messé, MacKinnon and a number of Broadway veterans on board, Broadway aspirations seem almost certainly involved, though no one is saying so yet, for the record at least — despite a title that makes it sound like the creators don’t expect the show to have a long shelf life. It’s an oddball prospect, but unusual fare has thrived there of late (“Fun Home,” “Avenue Q” or current smash “Hamilton,” for example). I’d say, go for it. Broadway could do, and certainly has done, a lot worse.
Robert Hurwitt is The San Francisco Chronicle’s theater critic. E-mail: rhurwitt@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @RobertHurwitt
Amélie, a New Musical: Book by Craig Lucas. Music by Daniel Messé. Lyrics by Nathan Tysen. Directed by Pam MacKinnon. Through Oct. 11. $29-$97, subject to change. Berkeley Rep’s Roda Theatre, 2015 Addison St., Berkeley. One hour, 45 minutes. (510) 647-2949. www.berkeleyrep.org.
