On June 3, the word most often on the lips of people pouring out of Flint Repertory Theatre in Michigan was “stunning.” They had just witnessed the premiere of a new version of The Fantasticks, the 1960 musical charmer, newly rewritten by its original lyricist/librettist Tom Jones to tell the story of two young men falling in love rather than the original’s boy and girl.

“I have to say, the story works better this way,” said Paul Molnar, a Kansas theatre artist who traveled to see the show. “I think the story lands more effectively. Not to say it didn’t work before—it did. But things change. The world is very different now, and what a brave retelling.”

The project, which runs through June 19, is the brainchild of Flint Rep’s artistic director, Michael Lluberes, who said he fell in love with The Fantasticks in middle school. In college, he experimented with a few scenes to see how it might work with gay lovers. During the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, he approached Tom Jones (the show’s composer, Harvey Schmidt, died in 2018) to ask for the rights to do the whole show that way.

“I wanted to see if the idea would fly, if he would be up for it,” Lluberes said. “He was intrigued.”

So intrigued, in fact, that he wanted to take the idea further than Lluberes had imagined. Lluberes said he had planned simply to change pronouns—make Luisa “Lewis” but otherwise leave the show pretty much the same—while Jones said he wanted to tinker a bit more with the 60-year-old show.

“He said, ‘Actually, I think this is a great idea—I’m going to do it,’” Lluberes recalled. “It astonished me. He basically went through it over a couple of months and did all this work on it—little detailed work on the lyrics and the scenes.”

Among the changes Jones made: He changed the gender of the parents who secretly conspire to keep their children apart, all the better to whet their appetites for each other, from fathers into mothers. Jones and Lluberes collaborated on other details up to a few weeks before opening, though they did so remotely. “It’s been all long-distance work, but it’s been a give-and-take creative experience,” Jones said. “The most fun is anticipating and not having a clue how it’s going to go over.”

Music Theatre International, has already fielded several inquiries, “and instead of spending all their money on elaborate scenery, go back to the fundamentals of gathering together, of providing a theatre that’s close and intimate, that will make you laugh and make you cry and make you feel different once you’ve walked out than you did when you walked in.”

Mark Gmazel, who has performed in many shows at Flint Rep, praised the show’s deceptive simplicity. “It really opened up deeper currents and avenues of thought and exploration,” he said. “Just the use of that confetti! As the technical guy, I’m calculating how much confetti is in the blowers, but when you see it executed—it was simple and beautiful and it made a point.”

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