Light in the Piazza Reviews- Page 3

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 4/18/05 at 10:52pm

I can't imagine a jukebox musical with an ineligible score having any chance of being nominated, let alone winning for orchestrations.

[iluvtheatertrash]

Posted: 4/18/05 at 10:58pm

So far so good!!!!!

[munkustrap178]

Posted: 4/18/05 at 11:00pm

MOVIN' OUT, Margo?

[apdarcey]

Posted: 4/18/05 at 11:02pm

exactly what i was thinking munk

[bythesword84]

Posted: 4/18/05 at 11:04pm

I just got home from opening night, it was awesome. i loved it.

[munkustrap178]

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

I'm really shocked at the good reviews...I wonder how much they changed...

[MusicMan]

Posted: 4/18/05 at 11:09pm

The orchestrations for SWEET CHARITY, newly minted by Don Sebesky, are the most thrilling sound currently emanating from a Broadway pit. Full-bodied and chunky, they put the tinker-toy, bare-bones combos that pass for 'orchestras' today in the shade. One is grateful the Weisslers (and associates) have put their money where there mouth is and recreated a sound that evokes Broadway in its heyday.

[TGIF]

Posted: 4/18/05 at 11:13pm

Don't forget Chirstina's persuasion and connections ($$).

[Mattio98]

Posted: 4/18/05 at 11:15pm

Perhaps, but I doubt that this production has much touring potential. I really can't see Christina taking the show on the road and it's true- this is a star vehicle.

Posted: 4/18/05 at 11:20pm

munk, im seeing Piazza again on Thursday, ill be sure to mention all thats changed since the first time I saw it.

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 4/18/05 at 11:21pm

Movin Out's orchestration award was more about the Tonys falling over themselves to find an excuse to honor a mega-celebrity like Billy Joel (and making sure he'd have an excuse to be on the national telecast) than it had anything to do with merit on any level.

Don't expect the non-celebrity orchestrators of "All Shook Up" to have the same luck (in fact it'll be amazing if they're even nominated).

Updated On: 4/18/05 at 11:21 PM

[munkustrap178]

Posted: 4/18/05 at 11:26pm

I really thought MOVIN' OUT deserved that award, hands down. I still feel the same way about ALL SHOOK UP.

[apdarcey]

Posted: 4/18/05 at 11:36pm

movin' out, yes
all shook up, no

BUT CAN WE KEEP THIS THREAD ABOUT PIAZZA?

Posted: 4/18/05 at 11:37pm

sure we can,

'Light in the Piazza' has music that shines
...
Clark is even more powerful as a singer, and her final song, a heartrending soliloquy about the wisdom of middle age, is absolutely devastating.

Kelli O'Hara's looks are unconventional for an ingénue, which makes her just right for Clara, but there is something deeply appealing about her, especially when she sings. Matthew Morrison, last seen in "Hairspray," has the perfect chiseled features for Fabrizio, and he sings and acts with an intensity one could not have imagined from the earlier show.

The physical production is spectacular. Michael Yeargan's sets, hauntingly lit by Christopher Akerlind, conjure up Italy perfectly.
...

Kissel

Posted: 4/18/05 at 11:42pm

"Clark is even more powerful as a singer, and her final song, a heartrending soliloquy about the wisdom of middle age, is absolutely devastating."

I'm happy to see this expressed. I've been somewhat puzzled by the idea that there's not enough of a story to maintain this piece. I found it to be about the mother's journey - which heaped physical limitation and guilt onto the usual struggle of parents letting go of their children. I found those ideas to be fully expressed and explored - and more than fully inhabitted by Ms. Clark.

And I found her final number to be thrillingly moving - a real tour de force. "LOVE, LOVE, LOVE!"

[WiCkEDrOcKS]

Posted: 4/18/05 at 11:48pm

Any new reviews yet?

Posted: 4/18/05 at 11:48pm

Variety appears to be up but i dont have a subscription...

[shira467]

Posted: 4/18/05 at 11:48pm

I'm thrilled so far with the reviews - I didn't expect a RAVE from all, and I didn't get it - but I'm glad it's at least appreciated and respected.

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 4/18/05 at 11:56pm

Didn't expect this one -- a RAVE from Kissell in the Daily News:

"Adam Guettel's score for "The Light in the Piazza" is the best piece of theater music since Stephen Sondheim's "Passion," lo, 11 years ago.

Guettel has captured the delicate, sometimes painful, ultimately radiant moods of Elizabeth Spencer's story about Margaret, a middle-aged American guiding her brain-damaged daughter, Clara, through 1950s Italy.

Unlike some of Guettel's earlier music, which had a "learned" quality to it, this score is lyrical, direct and, especially in its final moments, deeply moving.
________________________________________________________________

It is a great tribute to Guettel's score that he surmounts all these obstacles.

This is also a tribute to the extraordinary cast, led by Victoria Clark as the well-meaning but sometimes confused mother. Margaret is disturbed when the handsome Fabrizio woos her daughter, because she is convinced Clara can never lead a normal life. When, however, his family expresses reservations about the match, she goes on the defensive to save the marriage.

The dialogue does not fully articulate the understanding she reaches with Fabrizio's father, played by Mark Harelik, but they are so eloquent in their silent communication that we can accept the rapprochement. It is an example of Bartlett Sher's impeccable direction.

Clark is even more powerful as a singer, and her final song, a heartrending soliloquy about the wisdom of middle age, is absolutely devastating.

Kelli O'Hara's looks are unconventional for an ingénue, which makes her just right for Clara, but there is something deeply appealing about her, especially when she sings. Matthew Morrison, last seen in "Hairspray," has the perfect chiseled features for Fabrizio, and he sings and acts with an intensity one could not have imagined from the earlier show.

The physical production is spectacular. Michael Yeargan's sets, hauntingly lit by Christopher Akerlind, conjure up Italy perfectly.

There is a disarming simplicity and translucency to the orchestrations Guettel has created with Ted Sperling, who conducts the score with a full understanding of its emotional riches.

Many of my old vinyl cast albums are scratched from overuse. Thank God the album for "The Light in the Piazza," which cannot come soon enough, will be on compact disk!"



http://www.nydailynews.com/04-19-2005/entertainment/col/story/301248p-257877c.html

Updated On: 4/18/05 at 11:56 PM

Posted: 4/19/05 at 12:02am

does anyone have a Variety subscription that can give us a run down of the review?

[shira467]

Posted: 4/19/05 at 12:15am

yeah, really - I want Variety!

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 4/19/05 at 12:22am

David Rooney (Variety) is Mixed -- basically hates the score, but likes the book, performances and design:

"Exquisite as Bartlett Sher's production of "The Light in the Piazza" is on so many levels, it's ultimately the single element of a mother's emotional journey that resonates, due in large part to the flawlessly calibrated work of Victoria Clark, lending poignancy, grace and truth to a problematic show. As they stroll past the fountain and cross New York's most Italianate piazza to enter the Lincoln Center theater, those who care about the American musical will already be heavily invested in this ambitious collaboration between composer-lyricist Adam Guettel and playwright Craig Lucas. How they feel upon exiting will be a matter of sharp division.

Adapted from Mississippi-born writer Elizabeth Spencer's 1958 novella, this Jamesian tale of an American mother and daughter spending a summer in Italy, and of the mother's anxious attempt to shield her fragile daughter from a potentially disastrous romance, seems on the surface to be too subtle and delicate to translate effectively into a musical. (It was filmed in 1961, with Olivia de Havilland, Yvette Mimieux and George Hamilton.) But while it takes considerable time to identify the slender story's chief themes, Lucas' book is descriptive and sensitively observed, by far the more successful half of the collaboration. It's the music that seems ill-conceived and unsatisfying.

As he showed with the flavorful folk Americana of "Floyd Collins," Guettel has a gift for finding the right musical idiom to correspond to his material. His choice of impressionistic faux Italian chamber opera is quite appropriate here. Despite the show's admirable intelligence, however, the elements fail to jell.

While the score is consistently pleasant, it lacks body, and the songs themselves seem to defy emotional interpretation. There's a frustrating shortage of robust melodies that linger in the head; instead, the score unfolds, with all its jagged beauty, almost like recitative or interstitial music, which should be punctuating the fully developed songs that rarely arrive.

Too often, also, Guettel's lyrics seem to run out of steam, either drowning in the lush orchestrations or dissolving into light operatic vocalise, which furthers the sense of underscore masquerading as score.

That the musically underwhelming show remains as absorbing as it does is a credit to the measured work of director Sher; of Jonathan Butterell, who did the musical staging; and of the accomplished ensemble, led by Clark in what will surely be a breakout role for this talented musical performer."

________________________________________________________________

"In the awkwardly staged number "Aiutami" near the start of act two, in which turmoil has been induced by Margaret and Clara's sudden departure for Rome, Fabrizio's mother (Patti Cohenour), who speaks only Italian, breaks character to enlighten the audience -- in English -- about the hypocrisy of her marriage. The departure clashes with the show's overall tone and seems unresourceful for a writer of Lucas' insightfulness. The scene does underline, however, the musical's skeptical view of marriage, echoed not only in the brittle union between Clara's parents but also between Fabrizio's womanizing brother, Giuseppe (Michael Berresse), and his wife, Franca (Sarah Uriarte Berry).

Graduating to a more central role after playing Franca in the show's developmental phases in Seattle and Chicago, O'Hara is a sunny, attractive presence with a winning mix of vulnerability and defiance. Her soprano veers at times toward shrillness, however, and she doesn't quite muster the interpretive subtlety required for some uncommonly difficult songs.

In a role vastly different from his smooth dreamboat Link Larkin in "Hairspray," Morrison impresses with his full-bodied, confident vocals. He brings tender awkwardness to a young man stripped of self-consciousness and consumed by a brand of passion that seems patented by Italians. Harelik tempers his character's arrogance with warmth and perceptiveness. All the actors manage more than passable Italian.

The cast looks very fine in the smart '50s chic of Catherine Zuber's costumes, and some of the sweeping dimension lacking in the score is delivered in Yeargan's beautiful, intricately integrated sets, which seem to float into endless new configurations as they create multiple locations. The sumptuous design is capped off by Christopher Akerlind's painterly lighting, which takes an evocative cue from the show's title."

Posted: 4/19/05 at 12:25am

who else are we waiting for? i feel like theres still a few missing...

Posted: 4/19/05 at 12:25am

"How they feel upon exiting will be a matter of sharp division."

This is, apparently, the truest statement made thus far.

[allamarane]

Posted: 4/19/05 at 12:27am

Variety seems pretty positive, although they're not big on the music. Loved the design, the acting, and the book. If you go to variety.com, you can get a free trial subscription to read the review!

Who's left still?
Variety

Updated On: 4/19/05 at 12:27 AM