The Light in the Piazza
Maine State Music Theater
Through Sat., June 20
You can’t say Maine State Music Theatre is resting on its laurels. After celebrating its golden anniversary in grand fashion last year, MSMT has chosen to open its 51st season with a show it has never before attempted: The Light in the Piazza. Any time this bastion of classic musical theater attempts a show written by someone who’s still alive, it’s cause for celebration.
The Light in the Piazza is the work of writer Craig Lucas (Prelude to a Kiss) and songwriter Adam Guettel (who, as the grandson of legendary Broadway composer Richard Rodgers, must have melody flowing through his veins). This show won a pile of Tonys a few years ago. Set in Italy during the early 1950s, it begins as a light romantic trifle before revealing itself to be a more substantial dish.
Our main characters are Margaret Johnson (Lynne Wintersteller) and her daughter, Clara (Jennifer Blood), two proper Southern ladies from Winston-Salem taking in the sights of Florence. Clara is a paragon of high-spirited young womanhood. She cries, “There’s a completely naked statue!” in the public square, and “olly-olly-oxenfree!” in an echo-y old church. Mama Margaret clearly has her hands full — and that’s before Fabrizio appears.
Fabrizio (Ben Jacoby) doesn’t speak much English. When he tries to tell Clara her skin is like milk, what comes out is the mortifying, “Your milk is like…” But he’s handsome and smitten, which under the circumstances is more than enough for wide-eyed Clara. Soaring love songs ensue. Mama Margaret tries to whisk Clara away and distract her with museums, but alas, the museums are full of naked marble men.
Fabrizio’s family, the slightly stereotypical Naccarellis, rally ’round his desire to woo the young American ragazza and eventually overpower Margaret’s objections with a charm offensive. Most charming among them is Signor Naccarelli (Mark Jacoby, Ben’s real-life father), the suave and dignified head of the famiglia, who pays more than merely polite attention to the unhappily married Margaret.
During the first third of the play, Margaret comes across as an overprotective matron, failing to understand or approve Clara’s young love. But soon enough we learn she has good reason to shield Clara from the world, for Clara’s girlish demeanor is not just charming, it threatens to give away a troubling family secret.
Let’s get one thing straight before moving on to deeper matters: this production is very pleasing to the eye. The titular light (designed by Jeffrey S. Koger) shifts gorgeously from moment to moment, bronze to purple to gold, complementing the high-toned sets by Dennis Hassan and the envy-inducing costumes courtesy of Kurt Alger. Postwar Italy itself probably never looked this good, but isn’t it nice to think so?
On paper, The Light in the Piazza comes across as an Americanized version of A Room with a View, perhaps crossed with a Lifetime Movie of the Week. But fear not: Lucas’ deft handing of the characters saves them from caricature, and Guettel’s music lends them real emotional heft.
You won’t leave Piazza whistling the score — Guettel doesn’t write hooks the way Granddad did, at least not here — but you will be moved by it. The songs are lush and romantic in a remarkably cliché-free way. Guettel proves himself equally adept at musical soliloquies (like Margaret’s heartbreaking “Dividing Day”) and contrapuntal Mozartian group numbers like “Octet.” It’s appropriate that a show set in Italy should be so pleasingly operatic.
Wintersteller’s portrayal of Mrs. Johnson is the cornerstone of Piazza. Here’s an actress who can nail the jokes, be sexy, convey the pain of conflicted motherhood, and sing a demanding song while smoking. (Don’t try this at home, kids.) Blood brings a fine voice to the role of Clara and is smart enough not to ask the audience to pity her character, even when doing so would be quite easy. And Mark Jacoby is a nimble performer indeed: as Signor Naccarelli, he somehow gets the audience to laugh at a bunch of easy Italian stereotypes without reducing Fabrizio’s father to a figure of fun.
In fact, the entire cast is capable of pulling off the same trick. Witness the crowd scenes in the square, filled with stock background characters (nuns, dapper old men, flirty girls) who blossom into convivial, three-dimensional life as they take the air and circle each other to the lilt of Guettel’s music. Encounters in the piazza eventually convince Mama Margaret that her daughter, painful secret be damned, deserves to take part in the dance of life. This lovely musical should be enough to convince the audience to do the same.
— Jason Wilkins
Maine State Music Theatre’s production of The Light in the Piazza continues through Sat., June 20, at Pickard Theater, Bowdoin College campus, Brunswick. Tix: $29-$52. For a full schedule of performances, visit msmt.org. 725-8769.
