Vibrant storytelling and intergenerational intrigue take the stage at the Bean-Brown Theatre with Theatre Tuscaloosa’s performance of “Big Fish,” a Broadway musical set in Alabama. Running from July 17 to July 26, the complex musical and its ensemble cast features both University of Alabama students and Tuscaloosa community members.
While centered around timeless themes of family and love, “Big Fish” has a remarkably complex script rife with nuanced characters and an invigorating score filled with catchy show tunes.
In the musical, Edward Bloom, a distant father prone to telling tall tales, becomes stricken with terminal cancer. His newlywed son, Will Bloom, decides to set the record straight on his father’s embellished history. The musical emphasizes storytelling and takes audiences on a cross-country journey, from a mystical swamp haunted by an infamous witch to the campus of Auburn University.
This version of “Big Fish” stars — entirely by coincidence, as director and executive producer Michael Walker recounted — real-life husband and wife Brent and Lindsey Jones, playing the fictional couple Edward and Sandra Bloom. Kolby Stone, a sophomore majoring in marketing, also delivers a standout performance as Will Bloom.
Brent Jones, a 39-year-veteran of Theatre Tuscaloosa, said he was drawn to the larger-than-life character of Edward Bloom in auditioning for “Big Fish,” adding that the character’s energy was fun to bring to the stage.
“He exaggerates, he lives life to the fullest, he’s the ultimate optimist,” Brent Jones said. “I’m not quite as extreme as him, but that’s basically how I am in real life too.”
The coincidences linking the actor’s lives to the script don’t end there. Lindsey Jones went to Auburn, exactly like her character in the musical, and her grandmother was an extra in the “Big Fish” film adaptation. Brent Jones also met Lindsey Jones while she was performing at a theatre, similar to their characters in “Big Fish.”
“I didn’t know all of their story when I cast them,” Walker said. “It all kind of worked out fortuitously.”
However, the resemblance of “Big Fish” to the Jones’ lives wasn’t what drew them to the musical. Both said that they were intent on auditioning anyway, but the coincidences made the experience more special.
“It just worked out in a strange way,” Lindsey Jones said. “[My grandmother] would have eaten all of this up. She would be in the front row every night.”
Similarly, despite not specifically choosing to direct “Big Fish” for Theatre Tuscaloosa’s program, Walker sees his life reflected in the musical. His father, like Edward Bloom, was a traveling salesman prone to telling tall tales, the breadth of which Walker uncovered only after his father’s passing.
Both Lindsey and Brent Jones complimented Walker’s level-headed and comforting direction, while Walker praised the commitment of his cast and their effort in bringing the performance to life.
Ally Skelton, a senior majoring in vocal music education, turns in a highlight performance as a witch and various ensemble characters, singing one of the best solo songs of the musical: “The Witch.” Joshua DeBell, a clinical professor at the University, also steals the show with his rendition of Amos, a bristly circus ringmaster hiding an unusual secret.
“Big Fish” opened Thursday with its “pay-what-you-can preview,” selling tickets for as little or as much as playgoers desire. The musical runs at 7:30 p.m. nightly until July 26, taking a break next Monday and Tuesday.
Tickets are on sale online, with a student discount available.
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