Part III
The Spiritual
Ah, that eye-catching lead-in of the innocent soccer ball of boyhood, announcing with style the entrance of Matthew J. Morrison. Yet as he comes downstage, there is more. An immediate sense of “Who is this?” A grace in motion whispering athlete...sprinter...maybe dancer. Even when standing still he looks as though he is ready to move in the instant.
He sings his name and, after all, it is just a name, but so much has been communicated in those two words. He has already given himself to Clara. (Unfortunately, this did not make it onto the recorded CD.)
With “Il Mondo Era Vuoto” he takes his time and creates a sense of a unified whole, even with the interspersed scenes of acting. An elegantly building legato, giving himself entirely to the audience by the song’s end. But there is something more. A sense of being both inside and outside himself at once, of being outside himself laughing at himself as he hugs his father’s head to get his attention and pans absurd dance steps to his brother’s instruction. And my eye’s favorite part of the scene, his sudden exit across the stage, with the animal flash of a stag, antelope. No excess motion and great speed.
The leap over the bench is accomplished with grace and athleticism in “Passeggiata,” again delivered in a smooth legato, and never missing a note, including that funny little hop note while up on the bench. And it is in this scene that the years of dance training reveal themselves, not surprisingly in a waltz, as he weaves around Clara and escorts her around the stage with fine footwork.
The duet of “Say it Somehow” becomes an expression of creating a relationship of tender bonding. There is no demand or rush. Not so much sexual as spiritual. I always felt as if he and Clara were waiting for something, waiting to get married, waiting for the mother to come in, I don’t know what, but there was a holding back, a waiting, almost like a suspension in anticipation of an impending interconnection of great beauty, that kind of moment between two people when reality fades away into the universe of stars and galaxies, a place beyond time.
The brother-brother inter-relationship between Mr. Morrison and Mr. Berresse, hands down the best of the batch. Mr. Berresse is a tremendously strong actor with great presence who almost has had to tone himself down in the show so as not to upstage others in the cast. Mr. Morrison possesses a strength with sufficient weight to counter Berresse, even if with less experience.
Instead of in “Say it Somehow,” Matthew Morrison’s passion arrives in “Aiutami,” when he is separated from Clara, a lacerated anguish and sense of loss. Guts on the floor in his finest work of the piece. Starting that scene off with a fleet-footed run was a spark of directorial genius. I cannot say that Mr. Morrison is in any way not physical, he certainly is. Yet his work transcends the physical.
Matthew Morrison’s Fabrizio is, was, and will be, in one word, spiritual.
© 2006 All Rights Reserved nomdeplume by pseudonym
Updated On: 2/19/06 at 01:26 AM
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