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music and lyrics by Adam Guettel, book by Craig Lucas, directed by Jay Turvey

Shaw Festival, Court House Theatre, Niagara-on-the-Lake

July 13-October 13, 2013

Fabrizio: “Now I see as I have never seen before”

The Shaw Festival is currently presenting a splendid production of Adam Guettel’s musical The Light in the Piazza.  In the complexity of its music and the complexity of the emotions it evokes, Guettel’s musical from 2003 simply puts other 21st-century gewgaws that call themselves “musicals” to shame.  This is an imaginative production of a beautiful work that no lover of musicals should miss.

The musical is based on the 1960 novella of the same name by Elizabeth Spencer about a wealthy American mother and her daughter travelling through Italy in 1953.  Mary Rodgers, composer Richard Rodgers’ daughter, wanted her father to make a musical of the book, but as it happened it was her son Adam Guettel, who finally accomplished the task.

In the novella and the musical Margaret Johnson (Patty Jamieson) and her daughter Clara (Jacqueline Thair) are in Florence when Clara meets an Italian boy Fabrizio (Jeff Irving) and they instantly fall in love.  At first the wary, overprotective Margaret has to decide whether this is just some Italian plot to ensnare wealthy Americans.  Even when she meets the boy’s father Signor Naccarelli (Juan Chioran), she is still in doubt.  When, however, Fabrizio and his father invite the Americans to meet the whole family, Margaret realizes that Fabrizio and Clara’s relationship is rapidly heading toward marriage.

Margaret’s faces difficulties with no easy solution.  As we learn by the end of Act 1, Clara had an accident as a child that the doctor said would impair Clara’s mental and emotional development but not her physical development.  Clara knows nothing about this.  Margaret has to decide whether to tell the Naccarellis and risk their rejection of Clara which might further damage the girl or to allow things to go forward and risk the family’s rejection of her later when they find out the truth.  Margaret also has to choose whether she can make such an important decision about Clara’s future without the aid of her husband Roy (Shawn Wright), even though Margaret and he have been out of love for years.

What makes the situation even more complex it that Clara has bloomed as a person because of the love she and Fabrizio share.  The family notices that Clara tends to panic when angry or confused but, rather than being disturbed by her behaviour, comes to her defence.  And, if Clara is supposed to be mentally impaired, how has she learned Italian so rapidly?  Thus, Margaret, who has become inured to determining everything Clara does, wonders if she really understands her daughter as well as she thought and is in a position to judge what Clara does. 

The Toronto musical theatre company Acting Up Stage gave The Light in the Piazza its Canadian premiere in 2010 in a fine production directed by Robert McQueen.  The Shaw production, in which Jamieson and Chioran reprise their roles as Margaret and Signor Naccarelli, is finer because the story’s focus is clearer and the staging is more inventive.

A tendency present in the 2010 production was to regard the story as a variation on Romeo and Juliet with the lovers divided by culture and language and where Romeo is free to wander about the city while Juliet is closely guarded.  Jay Turvey, director of the Shaw production places the focus where is should be – on Mrs. Johnson.  The love between Clara and Fabrizio is important but what changes in the course of the musical and what affects the couple’s love is the change that occurs in Mrs. Johnson’s view of Clara, of herself and of life. 

Patty Jamieson is absolutely wonderful in this role.  Her Margaret is no stereotype of a puritanical American, but she is distrustful of foreigners and Catholics.  She has been naturally overprotective of Clara since her accident, but is now coming to realize that Clara is old enough to make her own decisions.  What makes Jamieson’s performance so delightful to watch is to see gradually her prejudices about foreigners and, indeed, about her own daughter gradually erode and give way.  Jamieson shows that Margaret’s beautifully sung reflection on the loss of love in her own marriage, “Dividing Day”, marks an important stage in the mother’s growing self-knowledge.  Jamieson shows us that Margaret begins the musical as someone who is fearful of losing control but ends as someone who feels the freedom of letting things take their own course.  It is this inner journey of Margaret’s that Jamieson depicts with such sympathy that makes the musical so uplifting.

Jacqueline Thair is an excellent choice as Clara.  She has a natural appearance of innocence and sings with a lovely, clear soprano.  Part of the musical’s strategy is that we are drawn to her without understanding her mother’s concerns, and the joy Thair seems to radiate when she finds love draw us to her immediately. 

As Fabrizio, Jeff Irving also conveys an innocence completely undeserving of the suspicion it arouses in Margaret.  The frustration he feels in not being able to speak English well enough to communicate his feelings evokes both humour and empathy.  Most of Fabrizio’s initial dialogue is in Italian as is his principal, near-operatic song “Il Mondo Era Vuoto”, that Irving sings with the power and passion that imbue his whole performance.

Juan Chioran is an elegant Signor Naccarelli, upon whose wisdom Margaret comes to depend.  Kelly Wong brings out the humour in Fabrizio’s older, good-for-nothing brother Giuseppe and has a marvellous Gene Kelly-like solo dance turn when Fabrizio asks him to teach him “American Dancing”.  Kaylee Harwood is convincing as Giuseppe’s fiery, embittered wife Franca, who's had enough of her husband’s infidelities.  She makes Franca’s advice to Clara about the disappointments of marriage both comic and frightening as we realize that Clara is not prepared for the depth of cynicism Franca imparts.  Julain Molnar makes Signora Naccarelli appear as an island of calm and good sense in the midst of her volatile family. 

Other cast members play a wide range of Florentines and tourists.  Shawn Wright’s blunt, preoccupied Mr. Johnson tells us all we need to know about the alienation between him and his wife.  Elodie Gillett shines in many roles but is most noticeable as a bossy tour guide in the Uffizi Gallery.  Peter Millard is both a suitably humourless priest and a comically enthusiastic tourist.  And Jeremy Carver-James clearly distinguishes the host of characters he plays who give depth to Guettel’s depiction of life in Florence.           

The Shaw production has the great advantage over the Acting Up Stage production by having the thrust Court House Theatre as a venue rather than the Berkeley Street Theatre Downstairs.  The thrust stage of the Court House brings the action into the audience and makes it more immediate and intimate unlike the long, narrow Berkeley Street stage that can give shows with multiple locations an unwanted processional quality.  For the Shaw, Michael Gianfrancesco has designed pillars and an arched proscenium to separate the musicians from the main playing area in front of it.  Here he has two marbled arches, both supported by pairs of double columns, that the cast can move into multiple configurations to evoke the many locations in the action from colonnades, to public squares, churches, palaces and museums.  Jay Turvey seems to use the constantly shifting scenery as a theatrical metaphor for the constantly shifting emotions that we and Margaret experience. 

From the piano Paul Sportelli conducts a group of four musicians –violin, cello, bass and harp – in a gorgeous account of Guettel’s 2008 arrangement of the score.  Guettel’s music is nothing like what most people might associate with “Broadway musicals”.  Instead of brashness, there is gentleness ad nuance.  Instead of showstoppers, songs grow naturally out of the dialogue and simply express with more emotion what spoken words cannot.  While Guettel makes reference to popular music of the period, his orchestration reveals the influence of French chamber music from Gabriel Fauré, through Debussy and Ravel to the tart rhythms and melodies of Les Six.  It is difficult, sophisticated and beautifully sung by the entire cast.     

The Shaw Festival production is of such a high calibre it is hard to imagine how it could be improved.  You leave elated not just because you’ve seen great performances but because the production leaves no doubt that The Light in the Piazza is one of the first great musicals of the 21st century.  The show is the finest musical on offer in Ontario this summer.  Be sure to see it.

©Christopher Hoile

Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.

Photo: (top) Jeff Irving and Jacqueline Thair; (middle) Jacqueline Thair and Patty Jamieson. ©2013 Emily Cooper.

For tickets, visit www.shawfest.com.