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BRAVO! 'Light in the Piazza' is brilliant
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Published: October 12, 2008
Updated: 10/11/2008 11:55 pm
Patrons were on their feet Friday evening at the Stevens Center, giving Piedmont Opera's remarkable production of Adam Guettel's musical The Light in the Piazza a well-deserved standing ovation. James Allbritten, the show's conductor, had just taken a bow.
Oddly, the final curtain didn't fall as it usually does after the conductor walks on stage. Allbritten asked audience members to settle down and take a seat.
Elizabeth Spencer, who wrote the 1960 short novel on which Light is based, was in attendance, and Allbritten wanted everyone to see her stand before applauding her for the wonderful seed she had planted.
This kind of page-to-stage connection rarely happens in the theater. It turned out to be one of many magical moments in a show that will go down as one of the best in Piedmont Opera's history.
Light, with dialogue by Craig Lucas, is a Tony Award-winning musical from 2005. It is one of those deceptively simple love stories in which layers of more profound meaning lie below many surface charms. It invites us to open our hearts and, ultimately, to feel the redemptive power of love.
If some serious themes emerge about special people and their place in the world, they are often conveyed with a light, often humorous touch, heard in some of Lucas' lines and seen in much of stage director Dorothy Danner's staging. The latter comes to resemble an intricately choreographed and precisely rendered dance. And Guettel's music, an attractive amalgam of the sounds of a Broadway musical and opera reminiscent of the Romantic era, soars like few other scores of our time.
In Light's plot, two Winston-Salem tourists are vacationing in Florence, Italy, during the 1950s. On Friday, the audience laughed and cheered when the name "Winston-Salem" was sung, though it happened in a rather earthy manner that can't be fully described in this family newspaper. Suffice it to say that Florence's often-nude sculpture differs significantly from that of Winston-Salem.
One of the tourists, Margaret Johnson, played by Jill Gardner, is married to a tobacco-company executive. The other is her daughter, Clara, played by Sarah Jane McMahon. Clara is 26, but she has the mental development of a 10-year-old as the result of a traumatic brain injury in childhood.
When Clara falls for an Italian man named Fabrizio Naccarelli, played by Erik Bryan, Margaret struggles with what to do about the love affair. Should she, as her husband Roy (John S. Rushton) desires, keep protecting her daughter? Or should she let go and allow her to have as much happiness as possible?
Gardner, as Johnson, is up to each of the many challenges facing her. She sings beautifully, narrates some of the story in a way that doesn't feel jarring, and, in her acting, convincingly illuminates her character's growth from an overbearing protector to a liberated, independent thinker.
As for McMahon, she accomplishes the near-impossible task of playing a character (Clara) who is both a woman and a girl. She is swept away with infatuation and sexual feelings, and, like a young child, she becomes unhinged and overwhelmed by unfamiliar environments. In the end, McMahon finds the right middle ground. We are convinced that she knows what she wants and senses how the world sometimes views her, but she is unable to express it with consistent clarity.
There is much to admire in the Naccarelli clan as well. This includes, in addition to Fabrizio, his brother, Giuseppe (Kyle Guglielmo, and Giuseppe's wife, Franca (Dawn Pierce). Fabrizio's parents are played by Jon Garrison and Marilyn Taylor.
No matter what the Naccarellis speak or sing, be it fluent Italian or broken English, they capitalize on moments of exaggeration, surprise and language barriers to tickle the funny bone.
Or, as is especially the case with Signor Naccarelli, they entice us to join them on the most moving and meaningful of mystical journeys.
■ Piedmont Opera will present The Light in the Piazza at 2 today and 7:30 p.m. Tuesday in the Stevens Center. For tickets, call 336-724-3202.
■ Ken Keuffel can be reached at 727-7337 or at kkeuffel@wsjournal.com.
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