Saturday,
August 05,
"The Light in the
Piazza": Absolutely Transfixing in the Luminous Best of Broadway
"Light" is
starting a national tour of the recently closed, long-running
Broadway show. It's essentially
Director Bartlett Sher's
Lincoln Center Theater production that opened early last year after some
significant revisions from its 2003 outing at Seattle's
Intiman Theatre.
This
is a Romeo-and-Juliet-intense romance of a young North
Carolina girl (Clara) and her Italian lover (Fabrizio) set in the early 1950s, in a sepia cityscape
of Florence, so
glorious it should be underwritten by the Italian tourism board.
On
one hand, there is the touching, complicated protectiveness of the North
Carolina girl's mother,Margaret,
and her interaction with Fabrizio's family; an indulgently bemused, worldly
father, Signor Naccerelli, the Mother,his
older and comically cynical brother Giuseppe, and Franca, his wife, in a
charmingly complex family dynamic.
WE CAN'T HELP IT. A BOY AND GIRL FALL IN LOVE BY "THE
LIGHT IN THE PIAZZA" AND SO DO WE
-- Love isn't just a many-splendored
thing in Adam Guettel and Craig Lucas' "The Light in the Piazza." It's abrupt, risky, passionate, tentative, sweet,
troubled, evasive, complicated, perhaps healing and somewhat scary. It's also absolutely transfixing in the luminous Best
of Broadway offering that opened Friday at the Orpheum Theatre.
Sentimental? Sure. Anyone who's ever wept or even teared
up at a wedding will be deeply affected by the central love story. But Lucas' cleverly layered book (adapted from the novel by
Elizabeth Spencer) and Guettel's
rich, sophisticated score do much more than develop the deeply affecting
tension between the Romeo-and-Juliet-intense romance of the young American and
Italian lovers, on the one hand, and the equally touching, complicated
protectiveness of the North Carolina girl's
mother on the other.
They leaven the
sentiment and refract its light through comic and sobering looks at love -- the
tempestuous Italian couple, a father's
unequivocal affection, the marriage alive with risks and compromises, a
tantalizingly genteel flirtation, a wife wondering when the love went out of
her marriage. Director Bartlett Sher deepens the
resonances with cunningly suggested images of other couples -- passionate,
predatory, commercial -- in a production that shimmers
with love and light.
That's very good news not only for the Bay Area but for
the rest of the country as well. The "Light" at the Orpheum is the
premiere of the national touring production of the recently closed, long-running
Broadway show. It's essentially Sher's Lincoln
Center Theater production that opened early last year after some significant
revisions from its 2003 outing at Seattle's Intiman Theatre.
Native San
Franciscan Sher, the Intiman's artistic director, has restaged the show
with the same design team, the lush orchestrations of Ted Sperling
and Guettel -- sumptuously recreated by music
director Kimberly Grigsby, conductor James Lowe and the first-rate orchestra --
and a few veterans of the Broadway cast. The new ensemble seemed to have a
little trouble finding its way at first on opening night, but once it did, the
performances meshed in an ever more captivating whole.
A sepia cityscape
of Florence, so
glorious it should be underwritten by the Italian tourism board, greets the
audience. Christopher Akerlind's
lights shimmer through the mists of Florentine morns, sun-baked afternoons and
evening afterglows. Catherine Zuber's
costumes offer a fashion show of early 1950s, bright, youthful, flouncy, American summer frocks and well-tailored dresses,
set off against the period Continental styles of the Italian denizens of
Michael Yeargan's
beautifully suggested, finely crafted Florentine piazzas, museums, shops and
cathedrals.
A composed
Margaret Johnson (Christine Andreas), with the self-assurance of wealth, and
her naive, girlishly enthusiastic grown daughter Clara (Elena Shaddow) enter the piazza, Margaret delving into a
well-worn Baedeker's guidebook for
historical and artistic edification. Clara is most interested in the stories
that sound like fairy tales, the people around them, the unusual light and the
anatomical accoutrements of some of the statues ("It's
the land of naked marble boys"). As Margaret half explains, Clara's mind isn't
as mature as her body.
Enter Fabrizio (David Burnham of the Broadway cast), a young
Italian transfixed by his first sight of Clara. His attention is more than
reciprocated. Clara is immediately attracted and then some. In Guettel's
sweetly, achingly soaring "The Beauty Is," Shaddow's clear, silvery soprano pours out her
exhilaration with the new emotions she feels and astonishment that someone
might love her. Margaret is not only not pleased, she tries
with increasing forcefulness -- and decreasing effectiveness -- to distract Clara
and get rid of Fabrizio.
It's the beginning of that three-way interaction that
seemed a little off on opening night. Though Andreas and Shaddow
establish a gently firm mother-daughter bond on the opening "Statues and
Stories" number, the marked discrepancy in their Southern accents is
distracting at first. Andreas also seemed to be pushing her maternal
protectiveness in the early scenes, as if the actor, rather than the mother,
was trying a bit too hard to convey her feelings.
The beauty of the
voices and the palpably surging hormones of the young lovers help get the show
going. As soon as Fabrizio's
Florentine family takes over, and Margaret begins to interact with them,
"Light" radiates ever more intricately lovely and emotionally
compelling beams.
Burnham pours out
his heart in a delightfully mock-operatic "Il Mondo
Era Vuoto" to the mockery of his older brother
Giuseppe (a comically cynical Jonathan Hammond) and indulgently bemused,
worldly father, Signor Naccerelli (portrayed and sung
by David Ledingham with gracious Old World charm).
Lucas plays lightly with Italian stereotypes and delves beneath them to create
a charmingly complex family dynamic, expertly filled out by Diane Sutherland
and Laura Griffith as Giuseppe's
mother and Franca,
his wife.
Griffith's angry, jealous,
voluptuous Franca
is searingly comic as Guettel's romantic lyrics and score take a cynically
bitter, anti-melodic twist in "The Joy You Feel." Andreas is
pensively heartbreaking in Margaret's
musings on her loveless marriage, "Dividing Day." Guettel
seems to be channeling the tuneful emotional clarity of his grandfather Richard
Rodgers one moment and the sophisticated wit and musical mastery of his mentor
Stephen Sondheim the next -- and the dramatic acuity of both in Clara's terrifying panic attack, "Hysteria."
He's creating something entirely his own, though,
particularly in songs like "Say It Somehow," a duet of physical,
emotional and spiritual attraction beyond words, eloquently expressed in music
and the joyously electric performances of Shaddow and
Burnham. Complications ensue, of course. Shaddow
captivatingly navigates Clara's
inner roller coaster ride on the title song and abrupt "Tirade."
Andreas keeps
growing in the role of Margaret. She's
riveting as she reveals the roots of her maternal concern, and beguilingly
seductive in the "Let's
Walk" duet. She brings the show to its evocatively ambiguous end with a
lovely light touch. Love may not be the answer, "Light" seems to say,
but it's the best guess we're got.
E-mail Robert Hurwitt at rhurwitt@sfchronicle.com.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=
/c/a/2006/08/05/DDGDAK9C0E5.DTL
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