| The Light in the Piazza | |
| Music | Adam Guettel |
|---|---|
| Lyrics | Adam Guettel |
| Book | Craig Lucas |
| Basis | Novella by Elizabeth Spencer The Light in the Piazza |
| Productions | 2003 Seattle 2005 Broadway 2006 US National Tour |
| Awards | 2005 Tony Award for Best Score Drama Desk Outstanding Music |
The Light in the Piazza is a musical with a book by Craig Lucas and music and lyrics by Adam Guettel. Based on a novella by Elizabeth Spencer, it is set in Florence and Rome in the summer of 1953. A young American tourist, Clara Johnson, meets and falls for young Italian Fabrizio Naccarelli. When Clara's mother Margaret learns of the affair, she opposes it for reasons that only gradually become clear to the audience.
The score breaks from the traditional Broadway popular or rock sound by moving into the territory of Neoromantic classical music and opera, with unexpected harmonic shifts and extended melodic structures, and is more heavily orchestrated than most Broadway scores. Many of the lyrics are in Italian or broken English, as many of the characters are fluent only in Italian.
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Background and productions
The Light in the Piazza was developed as a musical at the Intiman Playhouse in Seattle and then at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago. After 36 previews, the Broadway production opened on April 18, 2005 at the Vivian Beaumont Theatre in Lincoln Center, where it ran for 504 performances and closed on July 2, 2006. Directed by Bartlett Sher and choreographed by Jonathan Butterell, the cast featured Victoria Clark, Kelli O'Hara, Matthew Morrison, and Sarah Uriarte Berry. Chris Sarandon joined the cast as Signor Naccarelli later in the run, Aaron Lazar was a replacement in the role of Fabrizio Naccarelli and Katie Rose Clarke was a replacement in the role of Clara Johnson. In the pre-broadway production in Seattle and Chicago, Kelli O'Hara played the role of Franca rather than Clara (who was played by Celia Keenan-Bolger), and Steven Pasquale had played Fabrizio, but could not open on Broadway due to a conflict with the television series Rescue Me that he had just joined.
On June 15, 2006, shortly before its closing night, the show was broadcast on the PBS television series Live from Lincoln Center.
A national tour starring Christine Andreas as Margaret, Elena Shaddow as Clara, and David Burnham as Fabrizio Naccarelli started in San Francisco, California, in August 2006 and ended in Chicago on July 22, 2007.
A Japanese production of the musical was produced in December 2007, having a limited engagement of about a month. It starred Kaho Shimada as Margaret Johnson.
An Australian concert version premiered for a one-night only presentation at the Lyric Theatre, Star City in Sydney on August 17th, 2008. The cast consisted of members of the Australian company of The Phantom of the Opera, with Jackie Rees as Margaret, Kathleen Moore as Clara and James Pratt as Fabrizio. The production was directed by John O'May.
In the summer of 2008, Guettel reconfigured the musical as a smaller chamber piece for the Weston Playhouse Theatre Company, Weston, Vermont, where Sarah Uriarte Berry reprised her role as Franca.[1]
The show had its opera house premiere in October 2008 at Piedmont Opera in Winston Salem, North Carolina. It starred Jill Gardner as Margaret, Sarah Jane McMahon as Clara, directed by Dorothy Danner and conducted by James Allbritten.[2]
The show is expected to open as a Regional production in the Covina Center for the Performing Arts (Covina, California) in January 2009.[3]
The European premiere was directed by Paul Kerryson at the Curve Theatre, Leicester,UK in May 2009, with design by George Souglides, musical direction by Julian Kelly, lighting design by Giuseppe di Iorio, sound design by Paul Groothuis.
Original Broadway cast
- Victoria Clark: Margaret Johnson
- Kelli O'Hara: Clara Johnson
- Matthew Morrison: Fabrizio Naccarelli
- Michael Berresse: Giuseppe Naccarelli
- Sarah Uriarte Berry: Franca Naccarelli
- Patti Cohenour: Signora Naccarelli
- Beau Gravitte: Roy Johnson
- Mark Harelik: Signor Naccarelli
Song list
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Critical response
CurtainUp called the musical a "gorgeously staged and musically sophisticated adaptation... the Guettel sound is nevertheless plush and enjoyable with a genuine musical theater sensibility.... Lucas has made room for the young lovers' voices and retained enough of the psychological complexities to prevent this from being the dated soap opera it could easily have been."[4] The Village Voice, commented: "It has some considerable shortcomings, which I'll deal with below, but its main distinction is that its humanity separates it from the bulk of current musical theater."[5]
Critic John Simon, in NY Magazine, wrote: "...anyone who cares about the rather uncertain future of this truly American genre should—must—see the show, think and worry about it, and reach his or her own conclusions.... Lincoln Center Theater’s production is breathtaking. Craig Lucas’s book seems perfectly adequate to me, but the emphasis must be on Adam Guettel’s music and lyrics. Those lyrics, I’m afraid, are a bit self-consciously poeticizing, a trifle arcanely oblique."[6] Ben Brantley, in The New York Times, deemed the show "encouragingly ambitious and discouragingly unfulfilled... the production comes into its own only in the sweetly bitter maternal regrets and dreams of Margaret Johnson."[7]
Awards and nominations
- Tony Awards
- Tony Award for Best Original Score (WINNER)
- Tony Award for Best Leading Actress in a Musical (Clark, WINNER)
- Tony Award for Best Scenic Design of a Musical (WINNER)
- Tony Award for Best Costume Design of a Musical (WINNER)
- Tony Award for Best Lighting Design of a Musical (WINNER)
- Tony Award for Best Orchestrations (Adam Guettel, Ted Sperling, and Bruce Coughlin) [ (WINNER)
- Tony Award for Best Musical (nominee)
- Tony Award for Best Book of a Musical (nominee)
- Tony Award for Best Performance by a Featured Actor in a Musical (Morrison, nominee)
- Tony Award for Best Performance by a Featured Actress in a Musical (O'Hara, nominee)
- Tony Award for Best Direction of a Musical (nominee)
- Outstanding Actress in a Musical (Clark, (WINNER)
- Outstanding Music (WINNER)
- Outstanding Orchestrations (WINNER)
- Outstanding Set Design of a Musical (WINNER)
- Outstanding Lighting Design (WINNER)
- Outstanding Musical (nominee)
- Outstanding Actor in a Musical (Morrison, nominee)
- Outstanding Featured Actress in a Musical (Berry, nominee)
- Outstanding Director of a Musical (nominee)
- Outstanding Costume Design (nominee)
- Outstanding Sound Design (nominee)
- Outstanding Lighting Design (WINNER)
- Outstanding Actress in a Musical (Clark, (WINNER)
- Outstanding Musical (nominee)
- Outstanding Director of a Musical (nominee)
- Outstanding Set Design (nominee)
- Outstanding Costume Design (nominee)
- Outstanding Lighting Design (nominee)
- Outstanding Featured Actor in a Musical (Morrison, nominee)
- Outstanding Featured Actor in a Musical (Berresse, nominee)
- Outstanding Featured Actor in a Musical (Harelik, nominee)
- Outstanding Featured Actress in a Musical (Berry, nominee)
- Outstanding Featured Actress in a Musical (O’Hara, nominee)
References
- ^ listingwestonplayhouse.org, retrieved March 11, 2009
- ^ listingpiedmontopera.org, retrieved March 11, 2009
- ^ Covina Center 2009 Season Announcementcovinacenter.com, September 1, 2008
- ^ Sommer, Elyse. "A CurtainUp Review Light In the Piazza", curtainup.com, April 20, 2005
- ^ Feingold, Michael. "Passione All'Americana", Village Voice, April 12, 2005
- ^ Simon, John. "Everything is Illuminated", New York Magazine, April 25, 2005
- ^ Brantley, Ben. "A Wise Autumnal American in Florence", New York Times, April 19, 2005
External links
- The Light in the Piazza at the Internet Broadway Database
- Official homepage
- Interview from Studio 360 radio program
- The Light in the Piazza - Guide to Musical Theatre
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