Light in the Piazza Reviews

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 4/18/05 at 6:05pm

Broadway.com is up early -- Very Positive for the show a love letter for Clark:

"My wife left The Light in the Piazza convinced that she had just seen the richest, most psychologically complex female character of any musical. Ever. After 48 hours of trying to think of better examples than Margaret, Adam Guettel and Craig Lucas' conflicted Southern mother and protagonist, I have come up with Mama Rose in Gypsy and…maybe not even Mama Rose. (Nellie Forbush, Eliza Doolittle and Caroline Thibodeaux all received at least momentary consideration.)

Victoria Clark, a veteran supporting player from numerous Broadway musicals, has found the role of her career, and The Light in the Piazza is incredibly lucky to have found Victoria Clark. Her shrewd, poignant portrayal, imbuing Margaret's hesitant emotional growth and deep-rooted pragmatism with a lush singing voice, is by far the highlight of Guettel and Lucas' affecting, occasionally overreaching adaptation of the Elizabeth Spencer novel. Luckily, Clark gets enough help from her talented supporting cast, Bartlett Sher's crystalline direction and an exquisite physical production to vault Piazza over its dramaturgical gaps."
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"Guettel's work has repeatedly generated comparisons to Stephen Sondheim, and his latest effort isn't likely to change that. Any period chamber musical set in Italy about a love triangle involving one fundamentally compromised character is bound to generate thoughts of Passion, for one thing. Guettel also uses a similarly unified score, with recurring dense harmonic strains and sparing but effective choral work. (Guettel and musical director Ted Sperling contributed the sumptuous orchestrations.) And Piazza, like Passion, is likely to benefit from repeated listening, although the love duet "Say It Somehow" and Clara's haunting title song are among the songs to captivate on first exposure. Guettel's lyrics, while sometimes overexplicit, are particularly strong for the young lovers, who convey complicated ideas within a plausibly constrained syntax."

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"The pleasures of The Light in the Piazza are hard-earned by Broadway standards, but they are there to be found. The score, alternately rapturous and austere, will undoubtedly enchant some and baffle others; I tend to fall in the former category after one hearing and look forward to solidifying or tempering that view. What is indisputable is that Victoria Clark has created a character for the ages. Lucas has done a superb job in fleshing out Margaret within the confines of a musical-theater libretto, and Clark responds with consummate precision and grace. Calling hers the musical performance of the year would be accurate. It would also be a drastic understatement."



http://www.broadway.com/gen/Buzz_Story.aspx?ci=510707

[apdarcey]

Posted: 4/18/05 at 6:06pm

god it's early. but congratulations obviously.

[Michael Bennett]

Posted: 4/18/05 at 6:08pm

The power of Clark's performance was a little lost on me to be honest. Perhaps my seats upstairs were too far away from the stage. Ditto for the production itself, which failed to sweep me up with it.

[ljay889]

Posted: 4/18/05 at 6:10pm

Is this show a limited run? Broadway.com says it closes June 12.

Posted: 4/18/05 at 6:11pm

yep, limited engagement. i hope it extends.

[luvtheEmcee]

Posted: 4/18/05 at 6:12pm

yay!

[TGIF]

Posted: 4/18/05 at 6:13pm

So far so good!

Edit: my favorite quote from the article, "Calling hers the musical performance of the year would be accurate. It would also be a drastic understatement."

Updated On: 4/18/05 at 06:13 PM

[mirramar]

Posted: 4/18/05 at 6:16pm

I loved the set and staging for this show. . .
but. . .
I literally fell asleep for most of the first act and I felt terrible because I really wanted to like the show.

[BobbyBubby]

Posted: 4/18/05 at 6:21pm

Good for Victoria Clark. Brantley better be nice to her.

[QueenMuppet]

Posted: 4/18/05 at 6:30pm

Oh, this starts off well. Keeping my fingers crossed for more postive ones.... and waiting.....

QM

[MasterLcZ]

Posted: 4/18/05 at 6:37pm

Grode hits a bulls eye on this, with one tiny exception. I thought Morrison VERY good, and his broad gestures were appropriate. He's a young Florentine in love, for Petes sake.

Clark's scene in the hotel room with her husband on the phone (and her aftermath) alone should win her the Tony.

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 4/18/05 at 6:47pm

Talkin Broadway is mixed:

"Those who have been longing for a serious-minded, deeply felt musical to open on Broadway this season have finally gotten their wish with The Light in the Piazza. This show at the Vivian Beaumont shines like a beacon amid the dreck that's clogged the Great White Way's musical stages this season; whatever else might be said about it, its heart - and, unlike most other musicals this season, it does have one - is always in the right place.

It's certainly easy to laud the intentions of the show, which seeks to return to the Broadway musical a level of feeling, sophistication, and even art that today seldom seems to have a place alongside the likes of Spamalot and Brooklyn. Its capacity to unlock and address truly human concerns (particularly of the romantic variety) is a welcome antidote to the many recent musicals that are content with stock, jokey situations and archetypal or downright stereotypical characters, when real characters are employed at all.

It's more difficult, however, to praise the show itself. Based on Elizabeth Spencer's novella and with an often lush score by Adam Guettel and a generally admirable book by Craig Lucas, the musical bursts with the sunshine and unique personality of its Italian setting (primarily Florence, but also briefly Rome). But it doesn't deliver successfully enough on its implicit promise to identify and celebrate the transformative powers of love."

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"(The appearing and disappearing of Michael Yeargan's imposing stone palazzo sets is another of this production's impressive feats of stage magic.)

If Clara isn't necessarily the role that will make O'Hara the top-rank Broadway star she deserves to be, it will hopefully at least lead her to it: She's the production's standout, looking more radiant and youthful than ever (as decked out in Catherine Zuber's lovely period costumes) and sumptuously singing Guettel's rangy, difficult music with unqualified ease.

Clark is glowingly maternal as Margaret, a caterpillar slowly becoming a butterfly, though she tends to oversell the more protective aspects of the character, and her Southern accent is not always consistent. Morrison gives a beguiling, sexually charged performance, but is frequently overtaxed by Guettel's compositions and can't give O'Hara the strong musical counterpart she needs. The rest of the supporting cast, which includes Michael Berresse as Fabrizio's debonair brother, is uniformly strong.

Still, it's impossible to shake the realization that the show, above all, belongs to Guettel. The composer, as well known for his impressive theatrical lineage (Richard Rodgers was his grandfather) as for his 1996 breakthrough effort Floyd Collins, has provided here music and lyrics nearly operatic in scope. The score counts among its offerings elaborate counterpoint ensembles (there's a full-out octet in the second act), searing arias, and even gently pulsing Italian pop-art songs that pinpoint the place as well as the period (1953).

His finest numbers here include that octet, Clara's street-wandering "Hysteria" and her jealousy-driven "Tirade," and the first-act finale "Say It Somehow," in which Clara and Fabrizio break down emotional and linguistic barriers in a few minutes of passionate musical love-making. But much of Guettel's other writing is more staid in nature, and demonstrates his unwillingness to exploit the full possibilities of the musical storytelling form. Franca's backhanded "The Joy You Feel," the plaintive title song sung by Clara, and Margaret's "Dividing Day" about her failing marriage are at best obligatory time-wasters that could play equally well in some other show.

Better can be said of Margaret's soulful 11 o'clock number, "Fable," in which she details what she's learned about the difference between idealized and realistic notions of love, between how children perceive it and how adults know it to be. Clark invests herself in it like she does no other song in the show, and it results in an absorbing, involving finale. But she can't transcend its simplistic sentiments, many of which have already been addressed in subtler, more compelling ways elsewhere.

The number soars easily, but has difficulty landing. The same can be said of most of The Light in the Piazza. "




http://www.talkinbroadway.com/world/LightPiazza.html

Updated On: 4/18/05 at 06:47 PM

[touchmeinthemorning]

Posted: 4/18/05 at 6:53pm

and...Talkin' Broadway misses the boat again.

[BobbyBubby]

Posted: 4/18/05 at 6:55pm

Ugh Matthew Murray, stop writing reviews. Not that he's not entitled to his opinion, but his "opinions" are so poorly supported.

[Michael Bennett]

Posted: 4/18/05 at 7:00pm

I actually agree more with his review then Grode's.

[munkustrap178]

Posted: 4/18/05 at 7:03pm

Same here.

[Michael Bennett]

Posted: 4/18/05 at 7:11pm

Brankley's review is mixed -- with a love letter for Victoria Clark's character (as opposed to Clark herself, though he likes her too).


http://theater2.nytimes.com/2005/04/19/theater/reviews/19ligh.html Updated On: 4/18/05 at 07:11 PM

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 4/18/05 at 7:18pm

I'd call that mixed-to-positive, I think.

Brantley:

"And now this bulletin from the arid planet of Broadway: Rumors have been confirmed that a real human being has materialized in a mainstream musical, an environment that has become increasingly hostile to such life forms.

This unexpected creature, of the species American abroad and named Mrs. Margaret Johnson, appears in "The Light in the Piazza," Adam Guettel and Craig Lucas's encouragingly ambitious and discouragingly unfulfilled new show, which opened last night at the Vivian Beaumont Theater at Lincoln Center. Whatever problems there may be with this production, which reaches for the sky with short if well-shaped arms, Mrs. Johnson qualifies as a blessing for those in search of signs of intelligent life in the American musical.

For in the world of singing cartoons and dancing robots that are multiplying on Broadway like flu germs, the middle-aged, middle-class Mrs. Johnson - a tourist from Winston-Salem, N.C., in Florence, Italy, in 1953 - has the virtue of being a convincingly ordinary person who finds extraordinary self-expression in song. Played by Victoria Clark in what is hands down the best musical performance by an actress this season, Mrs. Johnson infuses the tired old woes and wonders of midlife disenchantment and autumnal romance with freshening shadow and light.

Otherwise, the show, which has been given a sumptuous production under the direction of Bartlett Sher, is notable for looking and sounding pretty and confused, rather like Mrs. Johnson's daughter, Clara (Kelli O'Hara), a 26-year-old beauty with the mind of a 10-year-old. Adapted from Elizabeth Spencer's elegant, elliptical novel of 1960, "The Light in the Piazza" considers love as a many-flavored thing, from sugary to sour."
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"Initially, I wondered if the production might be elaborating on the tone of knowing Sirkian hommage achieved by Todd Haynes in his film "Far From Heaven." But "Piazza" lacks the sustained vision and complexity of that movie. Mr. Guettel's evocations of pure and radiant young love, which involve a lot of breathlessly protracted "ah's" by Fabrizio and Clara, are simply lovely. They also become very irritating.

The songs of anxiety and dissonance are more persuasive, as when Clara finds herself lost in the city or when the alluring Ms. Berry delivers a Sondheimesque indictment of marriage. The quintet "Aiutami," performed by the Naccarelli family, brims with a tart musical wit that, though appealing, doesn't really fit into the show.

It's when Ms. Clark sings of the cracks and compromises in life that you experience the privilege of stepping inside someone else's mind. A hitherto inconspicuous Broadway performer , Ms. Clark emerges as a star not through show-stopping flash but with the quiet confidence of an actress who knows every bumpy inch of her conflicted character.

It helps, of course, that Mr. Guettel has such a commanding musical grasp of this character as well. A song in the first act, "Dividing Day," in which Mrs. Johnson reflects on the emptiness of her marriage, is a nigh-perfect fusion of a character, an actress and a song. Such moments are rare enough these days to make Mr. Guettel's Florence worth a side trip for hopeful theatergoers still looking for love in a Broadway musical."

[Michael Bennett]

Posted: 4/18/05 at 7:20pm

I'd say its mixed but forgiving in light of Guettel's ambitions as a serious musical theatre composer.

[LaCageAuxFollesFan2]

Posted: 4/18/05 at 7:26pm

Well he could have done more damage to the show and he didnt, but with that review, I'd make bets that the show will close as schedules.

Posted: 4/18/05 at 7:29pm

victoria clark getting positive/rave reviews is a good enough reason to extend especially if they want to get a tony with her. as of right now the show closes the week after the tony's-- really poor timing.

[My Fair Lady]

Posted: 4/18/05 at 7:30pm

I'm seeing the show next week!

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 4/18/05 at 7:30pm

Basically Brantley clearly respects what Guettel and company are trying to do, praises their ambitions, but has misgivings about the execution and overall product. Then again, he's had misgivings of one sort or another about every new musical so far this season, even the ones he liked -- "Spamalot" was "forgettable," Dirty Rotten Scoundrels" lacked "oomph," "All Shook Up was a "quotation of a quotation." It'll be interesting to see what he has to say about "Spelling Bee" (maybe he's saving his big rave for that).

Posted: 4/18/05 at 7:31pm

I'm just happy that the reviews don't seem to be mirroring some of the overt negativity expressed on the board toward the show.

[Michael Bennett]

Posted: 4/18/05 at 7:32pm

The show won't extend unless they notice a jump in ticket sales immediately following the reviews. Lincoln Center is a subscription based theatre. Scheduling an extension means they will be selling seats from scratch. The cost of extending isn't going to be worth the gamble of betting on a Tony win for Clark to fill the theatre - they won't have the luxury of waiting until June to make that decision, anyway.
Updated On: 4/18/05 at 07:32 PM