Some love for "Piazza" in Opera News

Updated On: 7/22/05 at 10:18 AM

Great review! I sort of agree with the comment about Kelli..but I could sort of tell something was up.

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Possible SPOILER:

That's interesting that you agree with the Kelli comment. I didn't know in advance, but I knew right away after the first song that she definitely acted young and something wasn't quite right. Maybe this is because I have spent time with children with mental disabilities such as Downs Syndrome where the maturity level is lower than their true age.

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Hahaha! Take that Brantley!

I love that there's so much Piazza love out there.

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***continuing spoiler alert, responding to WickedCatsontheRoof***

I perhaps missed a reference early on, but I didn't know how old Clara was supposed to be. Older actors are always playing high-school age kids (Wicked, Hairspray, Footloose, etc), so I wasn't sure if she was really just supposed to be 16. I comfortable take that leap all the time in the theatre. She would be admittedly a little naive, but it was the 50s and her mother was obviously protective, so I just wouldn't have necessarily made the same leap.

Similarly, once I figured out that she was 26, I found Matt's frenetic running around to be a little exhausting and over dramatic....then I learned that he was supposed to be 20 and it made a tad more sense. If he'd been a bit more calm, I couldn't taken him for up to 35 years old, believably.

Bottom line: with actors often not playing their characters their age, I was confused what I was supposed to understand especially from Clara.

Yeah..sort of the "invading personal space" thing.

The thing I never figured out was the mental age of Clara? Did she just stop developing at that age or did she continue to grow mentally? ugh. I think she did..somehow, right? Through the power of luv and all that jazz.

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Aigoo -- right :) I think the doctors thought she stopped at 12, but Margaret sees this change in her during the Italy stay. ...so we're left to wonder...was it "luv" or was her mental capacity growing little by little all these years and Margaret was too protective to let that be explored...? Probably some of both actually. Seeing Clara loved by someone else allows her to loosen the reins a bit.

Such real and honest questions for a mother. It begs the listener to jump into Margaret's shoes and think about they would have done.

WickedCatsontheRoof -- the "this is my baby" example is a good one. I guess it just wasn't obvious to me: Haven't you ever been on a vacation or in love or whatever and just wanted to scream from the rooftops? Songs in musicals so often let the characters sing what they'd never say (which is one of my favourite things about musicals)....so again the suspension of disbelief when I heard her sing "we're on vacation". I thought, oh she's just sharing her excitement with us, how nice. (This is actually a family joke as my mom says that all the time when we're on vacation, though admittedly not to strangers )

Though the realization was earlier, I found "it" *very* obvious though when Clara gets lost and keeps saying her name and street address - probably because she was speaking and not singing, which to me is grounded in the narrative, not just internal thoughts. These conventions of musical theatre can backfire on me

do you think that portrayal is accurate? or is this where a touch of suspension of disbelief enters? (I think this is what Kelli was alluding to in that now famous article...)