The musical, however, works best with the big production numbers. There are a few scenes in which the stage is nearly bare and populated by only a few performers and the space seems cavernous and the scenery too sparse. Naive and passionate, the two rush into a marriage that everyone knows is doomed to fail. Billy, played on alternate nights by Kris Anelli and Christopher Hanks, is a bully prone to act out brash impulses. Julie, played by Annie Bates and Nahal Shafagh, is the wide-eyed beauty who loves him unconditionally.
Hanks embodies the role with a brutish charm.
He swaggers and convinces the audience that he is a ruffian who tries to do the right thing but feels that the world is conspiring against him. Bates, as Julie, smiles with such sincerity and sings so sweetly that her reckless devotion to Bigelow seems believable. Julia Lees-Smith, who alternately performs the role of Julie's best friend Carrie Pipperidge, sings and acts with energy and unabashed giddiness. Lees-Smith's character delivers some of the corniest, funniest and genuinely sweet lines of the production as she sings and speaks of her love for the noble and upstanding Enoch Snow, who is played a little too stiffly by Skyler Venables. The story revolves around Bigelow.