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I’m in the unenviable position of having to give a negative reporting on my return to Theater Works two years, four months, and 12 days after a sad so long. They’ve moved into a much nicer space in the Peoria Center for the Performing Arts. They’ve brought back talented prodigal son Wes Martin to direct and head their black box space. They’ve chosen the perfect musical for their still-Sun City-beholden opening in Schmidt and Jones’The Fantasticks. However, they’ve opened too soon before they’d gotten a handle on their new space and Martin has had to fudge casting on two of his integral roles. These two miscastings, along with some technical glitches and a wayward lighting design (Joseph Benesh) that destroys the attempted simplicity Martin has obviously worked at, make this a regrettably rocky return.

There are strong members of the cast. Michael Bradley’s Matt is enjoyable. His baby face and pleasant voice are ideal for the role. Rob Evans is a great choice for Hucklebee, and though his voice is not as powerful, David Chamberlain is a fussily fun Bellomy. Brian Driscoll and Dave Hurley are wonderful as Henry and Mortimer. Though she’s the most chipper Mute I’ve ever seen, Courtney Weir is also efficient, though I question a lot of Martin’s choices for her.

But then there’s Lyman Akers and Kayte Zhang.

Zhang is very cute, very sweet, and her voice is strong, even as her tone is not. Listening to her Luisa shriek some of her higher notes is truly painful. She’s also not as strong an actor as Bradley, so some of their moments are off-kilter, such as their argument at the start of the second act, which she detrimentally rushes.

Akers is a worse situation. He’s just woefully miscast. You can’t really blame him for this, although there must have been some point when it occurred to him that El Gallo might not be in his acting regimen. But he does give it his all. However, his all includes a voice that flies across the scale like a slide whistle, lighting on all the wrong notes at the worst possible times, and a constant swinging back between the narrative El Gallo, who is as white bread as they come, and his stagey El Gallo, who is a little too ethnically caricatureish and much too creepily middle aged to be an attraction to Luisa. I know personally how hard it is to cast in this town, but surely there was someone else Martin could have called.

Martin’s direction is more brisk than necessary for this show, but one has a feeling that this may have been compensation for having moved from the more intimate black box to this larger theatre. db Bailey’s choreography doesn’t quite fit the music, especially during the musical interludes. It seems like he and Martin didn’t know what to do with these, so they gave them just a little less than necessary to do. Many moments of Martin’s direction work for the show, especially the hilarious rape scene, but not quite everything is this well staged.

Richard Hardt’s set is a good recreation of the standard space, but Benesh has created a light show for this production that rivals a Pink Floyd laser show. There are so many cues, so much color is used, a large amount of instruments are focused at the audience, and there are so many bumps on lines that I’d warn epileptics away from this production. It also seemed that the multitude of cues overwhelmed Stage Manager Mary Ann Martin, for several of them appeared to be off. Adrian Burrell’s costumes are a more appropriate design for the show, especially Mortimer’s second act costume.