Sunday,
November 05, 2006
"Light in the Piazza" To Prompt a
Flurry of Travel to
The
ANNOTICO Report
"Piazza",
a much-ballyhooed Broadway musical, has been crafted around the sage sentiment,
and well-worn, adage about setting free something if you really love it, that
equates to "let your child live her
own life, damn it!" .
There
can not be a more heartbreaking pair of messengers than a mother and daughter,
each with much to learn while vacationing in 1953
"Piazza"
seem closer to opera than to musical theater, and we
have a tale daring enough to leave extended stretches of dialogue (spoken and
sung) in untranslated Italian, yet secure in the
conviction that audiences will understand all that they have to.
A LOVELY,
HEARTBREAKING "LIGHT" IN
By Evan Henerson, Theater Critic
U-Entertainment
November 5, 2006
THAT sage, if well-worn, adage about setting free something you love must have some value that a much-ballyhooed Broadway musical has been crafted around the sentiment.
This is by no means meant to be reductive. You won't soon encounter a more
swoon- worthy packaging for a "let your child live her own life, damn
it!" tale than Craig Lucas and Adam Guettel's
"The Light in the Piazza." Nor, for that matter, is there a more
heartbreaking pair of messengers than Christine Andreas and Elena Shaddow playing a mother and daughter, each with much to
learn while vacationing in 1953
Adapted from Elizabeth Spencer's novel, "Piazza" is a small musical with a big voice and some decidedly nonmusical conventions and behaviors. Fabrizio Naccarelli, the 20- year-old Florentine clothier - whose smitten-at-first-sight ardor is matched by our young heroine's - acts and sings like he has just waltzed out of a Puccini opera.
Impassioned Fabrizio is hardly the only factor that sometimes makes "Piazza" seem closer to opera than to musical theater. We have a tale daring enough to leave extended stretches of dialogue (spoken and sung) in untranslated Italian, yet secure in the conviction that audiences will understand all that they have to. Who among us - Lucas and Guettel suggest - doesn't know about love?
Amore - her child's or her own - is actually the furthest thing from Margaret Johnson's thoughts when she takes her daughter, Clara, abroad. Clara (played by Shaddow) is 26 but has a "gee whiz!" sense of wonderment that suggests there's more going on with her, which there ultimately is. Margaret (Andreas) is protective, yes, but the romantic forces of bella Italia have some mighty powerful mojo.
And neither mother nor daughter is prepared for the amorous wallop of a Fabrizio, or the orchestrations of the extended Naccarellis.
The very city of
The thorny secret involves Clara, but the regret and perspective are Margaret's. Andreas smoothly counterbalances Shaddow's giddiness. Her transformation from mother hen to understanding advocate is a gradual one. Her curtain-closing plea, "Love if you can, oh my Clara, love if you can, and be loved," is enough to open floodgates for those in the audience.
Ditto Shaddow's performance. All of Clara's hopefulness, self-doubt and brokenness are written on the actress' lovely wounded face.
Guettel, the grandson of composer Richard Rodgers, clearly has an equally powerful, albeit stylistically different, strain of music in his DNA. "Piazza's" sweeping, verseless melodies ideally meet the requirements of this tale.
Guettel's score took the 2005 Tony Award, and, as exciting as it will be to see what he produces next, audiences would do well to proceed, posthaste, to the "Piazza." The journey is well worth it.
Not the usual musical
Wait ... there's more
Evan Henerson (818) 713-3651 evan.henerson@dailynews.com
The ANNOTICO Reports
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