'Light in the Piazza' is all sugar and fluff

[kyle.]

Posted: 11/4/06 at 11:49pm

By Jim Farber
THEATER CRITIC
DailyBreeze.com

It's hard to believe that "The Light in the Piazza," which opened Wednesday at the Ahmanson Theatre, won six Tony Awards in 2005; it must not have been a very good year. But then the show didn't walk away with honors for best musical, best book, best actor, best actress or best director.

Adam Guetell did win for best score (and lyrics). But the competition was from Monty Python's "Spamalot" (which won for best musical) and "The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee." Most of the show's awards were for technical achievement: the sets by Michael Yeargan, the costumes of Catherine Zuber, and the lighting by Christopher Akerlind (all of which pale in comparison to Los Angeles Opera's snazzy recent update of "Manon.")

"The Light in the Piazza" is based on a 1960 novella by Elizabeth Spencer that became the 1962 film starring Olivia de Havilland, George Hamilton and Yvette Mimieux. Like "The Innocents Abroad," "A Room With a View" and "Summer Time," it deals with tourists taking the grand tour, guidebooks in hand, gawking their way through Italy.

The time is 1953 -- when the country was still emerging from the devastation of World War II. Cinematically, it's the period between the stark neo-realism of De Sica's "The Bicycle Thief," and the sophisticated excess of Fellini's "La Dolce Vita." In this case, the unsophisticated Americans abroad are Margaret Johnson (Christine Andreas), a prim and proper lady of the South, and her wide-eyed daughter, Clara (Elena Shaddow).

Awestruck by one church after another, they find themselves standing in the Piazza della Signoria when a gust of wind lifts Clara's hat into the air. It lands in the hands of a handsome young Italian named Fabrizio (David Burnham). Their eyes meet. It's love at first sight. No questions asked.

The fact they have practically nothing in common and can barely communicate does not matter. It's a match made in heaven. In heaven all things are possible.

Clara's overprotective mother, however, has less faith in miracles. She knows something about Clara that her Italian beau and his family do not -- she is "special," (developmentally challenged following a kick in the head from a pony).

Can this would-be Juliet from Winston-Salem find happiness in the arms of her Florentine Romeo? Will their parents agree to such an improbable (though potentially lucrative) union? Will love conquer all, including Clara's case of arrested development? If "The Light in the Piazza" had been written by Tennessee Williams, these conflicts might produce real drama. They might even provide groundwork for a complex musical.

But in the present case, the adaptation by Craig Lucas (at least in the hands of this cast) is far too simplified. Everything is black or white, which leaves the characters and their conflict without a hint of chiaroscuro -- a guiding principle of Renaissance art.

Burnham (who has an impressive voice) offers the most ardent performance. But after a while his heart-on-sleeve protestations (in Italian and faltering English) become tiresome. What he sees in Clara, beyond her deer-in-the-headlights gaze and propensity for quirky outbursts, is hard to fathom.

In the film, casting Mimieux as Clara made perfect sense -- no one ever communicated vacuous innocence better. In comparison, Shaddow's Clara is a powerhouse, despite a few moments of mental core melt down (oddly symbolized by flights of operatic coloratura); she is spunky, assertive, self-aware, and seemingly anxious to get out from under her mother's overprotective wing. She also has a ringing voice. Too bad she isn't given anything noteworthy to sing.

If Clara is mentally challenged, Andreas' performance is vocally schizophrenic. She speaks with a broad southern accent. But when she sings her perfect English diction sounds more like Julie Andrews. Her transition from smothering mother hen to matchmaking Friar Lawrence also is hard to believe.

Guettel's music might have won the Tony, but there is very little in it that's worth rewarding. It's a bon-bon, a tiramisu, a whipped cream confection of air and sugar. Vacuous is the word that comes to mind.


(It did win for Best Actress...)

[clarkstallings]

Posted: 11/4/06 at 11:54pm

That article is just about right. Don't stone me please.

[LizzieCurry]

Posted: 11/4/06 at 11:58pm

So, so true. Right there with ya, Clark.

[BDrischBDemented]

Posted: 11/5/06 at 12:04am

I'm also going to have to agree with the review...I really never got the show.

[ljay889]

Posted: 11/5/06 at 12:10am

That guy clearly has his facts wrong. And clearly he rather sit through crap like WICKED.

[LizzieCurry]

Posted: 11/5/06 at 12:12am

What facts did he get wrong?

[RentBoy86]

Posted: 11/5/06 at 12:13am

From the televised show I thought it was breathtaking, stunning, beautiful, compelling, imaginative, and brillant. But some people prefer Brooklyn, and some prefer Sunday in the Park With George. It's all subjective.

[ljay889]

Posted: 11/5/06 at 12:17am

Victoria Clark DID win the Best Actress Tony.

That is a pretty big mistake, considering the awards, raves and talk she received that year for her performance.
Updated On: 11/5/06 at 12:17 AM

[LizzieCurry]

Posted: 11/5/06 at 12:18am

That's only one fact...

[Wicked_fan]

Posted: 11/5/06 at 12:25am

RentBoy, I completely agree with you.

It took me awhile to fall in love with the music, but now I think it's captivating, and after seeing the televised production I thought it was absolutely brilliant (though I wasn't very fond of Katie Clarke). And I'm sorry, what's wrong with "Spelling Bee"?

A critic for a local paper, no doubt.

[nomdeplume]

Posted: 11/5/06 at 12:31am

"a whipped cream confection"

The quote for newspaper ads.

[DAME]

Posted: 11/5/06 at 12:35am

[emo_geek]

Posted: 11/5/06 at 12:53am

Rent boy: "From the televised show I thought it was breathtaking, stunning, beautiful, compelling, imaginative, and brillant. But some people prefer Brooklyn, and some prefer Sunday in the Park With George. It's all subjective"

Yet you have bashed people in other threads about Brooklyn. Hippo.

/rant over. I think I will drive over to the A and see this for myself.

[FosseBoi]

Posted: 11/5/06 at 1:08am

"Too bad she isn't given anything noteworthy to sing."

I am disgusted by that comment. No, "The Light The Piazza" and the other songs and solos that Clara sings are NOT noteworthy at all.

[Jazzysuite82]

Posted: 11/5/06 at 1:16am

Ummmmmm it seems that this guy didn't get the point of the show. And if you agree with it you probably didn't get it either. Notice I'm not saying if you didn't like it you didn't get it. Clearly this guy doesn't get it.

He talks about this accepted match made in heaven, where the world is black and white no questions asked. Ummmm did we see the same show? Because the whole point of Piazza is that there's this great big area of gray when it comes to the heart. The match is ANYTHING but perfect, which was the whole issue. There were lots of questions asked. By everyone including Fabrizio and Clara. I find it odd that the reviewer finds Claras hysterical moments odd because they're operatic, though HARDLY coloratura. What was she supposed to sound like at a hightened moment, Idina Menzel?! I think THAT would be odd. The entire texture of the show is consistant. This review makes me think that they don't have competant reviewers at this paper.

[LizzieCurry]

Posted: 11/5/06 at 1:20am

The entire texture of the show is consistant.

Yes, too consistant. Rather like some very good ice cream flavors that have been overstirred together to create a homogenous glop.

[FosseBoi]

Posted: 11/5/06 at 1:22am

Thank you Jazzysuite!

[SweMozArt]

Posted: 11/5/06 at 1:23am

If that review is correct i would sue the producers as an audience member. A show with "light" in its name shouldn't be "all sugar and fluff".

[Jazzysuite82]

Posted: 11/5/06 at 1:24am

"The entire texture of the show is consistant.

Yes, too consistant. Rather like some very good ice cream flavors that have been overstirred together to create a homogenous glop."



That makes no sense. Theatre isn't ice cream. It'd be rediculous to have an impressionistic score (with hints of Debussy and Ravel) with legit voices and then change the flavor to a contemporary popish number with people belting. When talking about score writing style and theme are the glue to hold it together. Otherwise the whole thing falls apart.
Updated On: 11/5/06 at 01:24 AM

[Plum]

Posted: 11/5/06 at 1:40am

I never "got" the Piazza phenomenon myself, but as to the accusation that it's a piece of fluff...so what? So it's a fairy tale with really pretty production design. That's a worthy thing to be.

[Wanna Be A Foster]

Posted: 11/5/06 at 1:44am

This theater critic threw his credibility into the trash by saying in his first paragraph that the show did not win Best Actress at the Tony Awards. He was obviously trying to create some bitchy argument, which he continued to attempt to prove throughout the rest of his review. But if he's going to start out his argument with a piece of evidence that is 100% FALSE, then his argument is USELESS, and it only makes the rest of his pompous review sound completely juvenile. Not to mention that he starts his second paragraph with ANOTHER piece of FALSE information. PIAZZA's Tony-winning Best Score (which, by the way, was written by Adam Guettel -- if he's going to insult a great composer, the least he could do is spell his name correctly) competition included "Spelling Bee" and "Spamalot", yes, but it also included "Dirty Rotten Scoundrels", which was the score's prime competition that season. There were not three nominees in the category, and he presents it as such. This guy makes a total fool of himself and his publication by writing this as a supposed "review". If it was Michael Reidel's gossip column, that would be one thing. But as a review, it's trash.
'Light in the Piazza' is all sugar and fluff

Updated On: 11/5/06 at 01:44 AM

[SueleenGay]

Posted: 11/5/06 at 1:50am

I love how he has to explain chiaroscuro to his stupid readers. The whole point of the show, as Jazzy stated, is that love is full of con traditions and sometimes even though your head tells you it's wrong you have to embrace it before the chance is gone forever. It is Margaret's story, not the lover's story. It is about learning to let go, and risk it all for the sake of your child's happiness.

[TheatreDiva90016]

Posted: 11/5/06 at 4:03am

TOO consistant?!

They had two numbers that didn't seem to fit at all. One sounded rather Country/Western to me.

Sorry, I didn't mark them in my program, so there's no way for me to tell you which two, but they were both sung by Margaret.

Also, the picture on the front of the program of the two of them holding hands and running through the set look MIGHTY cheesy to me. Sort of like a Sears and Roebuck ad. Couldn't they have done SOMETHING more artistic? (Yes, folks... That is the set.)

[nobodyhome]

Posted: 11/5/06 at 5:32am

In the case of "Dividing Day," TheatreDiva90016, it seems to me that it makes total dramatic sense for Margaret to employ elements of a musical idiom associated with the American South in an internal monologue about her own marriage. It sounds more folk to me than C&W, but the two are related and I can hear a bit of C&W in there.

I'd guess that the other song you're thinking of is "A Fable," but I'm not sure why you think it sounds out of style with the rest of the show.

In fact, the show does vary its musical idioms to some degree (sometimes greatly) based on character and situation. This is not so unusual for a musical to do. Eliza and Alfred Doolittle are not only both in the same show but are also daughter and father, and yet the operetta style of "I Could Have Danced All Night" is quite far away from the music-hall style of his songs. "By the Sea" is worlds away from "Green Finch and Linnet Bird" or "Epiphany." And people have often noted that "Matchmaker, Matchmaker" and "Now I Have Everything" sound pretty different from most of the Fiddler score. And the operetta sounds of "Out of My Dreams" and "People Will Say We're in Love" are far from the style of "Kansas City" or "The Farmer and the Cowman."

Of course, none of this means that you have to find it convincing in Piazza. But musical eclecticism is quite common in musicals.

[MasterLcZ]

Posted: 11/5/06 at 6:47am

I liked PIAZZA and had no problem with the electicism of the score, but I always had the sneaking suspision that it was less about love triumphing over complications than Margaret's sneaky triumph in palming off her daughter on a group of passionate but spectacularly clueless Italians so she could get back to a life of tea sandwiches, bridge parties and shopping for fabulous hats.

Updated On: 11/5/06 at 06:47 AM