Italy comes alive in Walterdale romance
The Light in the Piazza is a rarefied experience. It’s not a brash, glitzy Broadway show. Although some of its demands are operatic, it’s not an opera. It’s more of an operetta. Adam Guettel’s music is lush, but quite complex with unsuspected harmonic shifts.
To give you an idea of what it calls for in a performer – the musical most recently opened in England’s West End starring reigning opera diva Renee Fleming. The new Edmonton production is from Walterdale Theatre Associates and plays in their theatre through July 13. The feel-good musical is an audience favourite and has scooped up a number of Tonys and other awards.
The inspiration is an MGM movie from the early ’60s (set in the 1950’s) and revolves around Margaret Johnson (Leslie Caffaro), a wealthy American wife who is returning to the scene of her honeymoon in Florence. She brings with her Clara (Heeyun Park), her daughter, who seems a little unworldly. When Clara’s hat blows off in the piazza it is rescued by the dashing, handsome Fabrizio (Brendan Smith). The passionate young Italian and the ethereal Clara immediately fall in love, which leaves Margaret with a very difficult moral dilemma.
Outwardly, Clara is a luminous 20-something with a beguiling childlike vacancy. She’s difficult at times, prone to childish tantrums, but what mother-daughter relationship doesn’t have rough moments? In Caffaro’s sensitive performance, we can see how deeply she cares for her daughter.
Due to a childhood accident, Clara has been left with a permanent 12-year-old mentality.
“Florence is a city of marble boys with no clothes on,” she giggles to her mother.
Fabrizio doesn’t know of her disability but is so smitten with his winsome new love, he really wouldn’t care. Should he be warned? What are the future possibilities for the two? In their relationship, the actors are so simpatico and so filled with joy that you can not help but root for them. Back at home, Margaret’s distracted and distant husband Roy (J. Nelson Niwa) is no help. Margaret sees that her child has been transformed by her love for Fabrizio. The concerned mother must confront her own deep-seated regrets and hopes for the future – and her own romantic failures. As the magical light of Florence comes up in the piazza, Margaret becomes aware that her daughter’s future holds many more possibilities, and her beloved Clara’s chance for happiness lies in the unexplored lands beyond her mother’s boundaries.
Of course Fabrizio has a boisterous Italian family. They come to share a familial love for this fresh and innocent American who has joined them.
As Margaret sighs, “This is what Italy does to you.”
The musical is an interesting combination of English and Italian and much Italian is spoken. The very ethnic cast all do a masterful job of sounding authentic – ably capturing the musicality of the accent.
As an interesting side note, Guettel is Richard Rogers’ grandson. He inherited his grandfather’s piano, which means that the score was composed on the same instrument that gave us Climb Every Mountain and If I Loved You. Like most of Sondheim’s work, you probably won’t come out of the show humming a specific tune but the score is lush and rather sweet.
Heeyun Park is quite convincing, mercurial and angelic as Clara. She’s a good actor with a resonant delivery ready-made for the career in musical theatre she’s planning. Smith’s Fabrizio in an appealing fellow full of brio, and my how he falls in love with the radiant grace of Clara – his songs of love and heartbreak delivered with a pleasant high tenor. A dapper Bob Klakowich plays the head of La famiglia in the grand operatic style. Antonio Bavaro registers strongly as Giuseppe, Fabrizio’s irrepressible brother, particularly in a comic scene where he tries to teach his fumble-footed brother how to dance. Erin Vandermolen-Pater overcomes what could be a throwaway role to create an impression with a strong voice and personality as Franca, Giuseppe’s long-suffering wife.
The show centres around the radiant Caffaro, and she carries it in a most impressive manner. Her slow acceptance of the inevitability of human love is affecting. She’s both a fine singer and compelling actress.
The large orchestra (10 pieces – with many doubles) sits at the back of the stage and gives Guettel’s fiendishly complex score an excellent reading – under conductor Ron Long. Anyone who has been to Florence will enjoy Joan Heys Hawkins’ large paintings of the Piazzale Michelangelo with all those glorious Renaissance buildings.
Kristen M. Finlay’s direction is deft and imaginative.
There is no doubt that Light in the Piazza is a light romantic comedy but there is a pleasing air of nostalgia in this sun-drenched entertainment. It is the Italy of our collective memories – whether we’ve been there or not.
