losing your mind
by
Douglas Messerli
Craig
Lucas (book), Adam Guettel (lyrics and music) The Light in the Piazza / the performance I saw with Howard N. Fox
was at LAOpera’s production at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion on Sunday, October
13, 2019
I
don’t like reviews that begin with the critic’s statements of his or her own
ability to speak out about the work, but I have to admit that I begin this
review with severe doubts my own powers to write intelligently about it.
Adam Guettel’s 2005 Broadway (via Lincoln
Center) musical is one of the most stunningly beautifully scored works of
theater—or even of contemporary opera; and it won several Tony Awards for its
magical invocation of a visit of an US mother and daughter’s to Italy, the
mother in search of the love she has lost while the daughter discovers new love
in Florence in the form of a beautiful young Italian boy, Fabrizio (Rob
Houchen), when she temporarily loses her hat—a metaphor clearly for the mind
that lies beneath it.
And it is no accident that she has lost
her mind in the incident, since we gradually discover in the work that this
young girl, Clara Johnson (Disney star Dove Cameron) is what her mother and
father perceive is mentally-challenged having been kicked in the head by a
small Shetland pony in her childhood.
Yet, for all that—and this is a problem
in all the versions of this work which I have experienced, the book by
Elizabeth Spencer, the movie directed by Guy Green (and the weakest of these
versions), and now the musical, all are rather vague about the actual mental
problems of the lovely young Clara. If perhaps she seems overly naïve, falling
immediately in love with Fabrizio, so does he seem equally naïve and just as
innocent—with only the excuse that he is still almost a teenager, having just
turned 20.
Clara, however, quickly learns several
words of Italian, and quickly is able to speak up against her over-protective
mother, Margaret (the great singer Renée Fleming); and, ultimately, when she
and Fabrizio are about to be married, quite quickly learns the Roman Catholic liturgy,
including several Latin phrases. For me, this has always been a problem with
this work. If she is truly medically impaired, so might we all be.
What is important in this work—with its
absolutely beautiful songs and musical arpeggios, and absolutely stunning if
quite simple set by Robert Jones along with glorious lighting by Mark Henderson—is
that the elders, who almost all have failed in their adventures with love are
desperate to protect their youngest from the same pains they have suffered.
At the heart of this musical are the
failures of the adult relationships: Margaret’s long empty marriage to her
business-hungry husband Roy (Malcolm Sinclair), the unfaithfulness of Fabrizio’s
father Signor Naccarelli (Brian Stokes Mitchell)—which at one point is described
as recognized by his more faithful and forgiving wife (Marie McLaughlin)—and
Fabrizio’s far-more disillusioned sibling Giuseppe (Liam Tamme) and his wife
Franca (Celinde Schoenmaker), who almost brings poor Clara to tears in her
attempt to convince her, in the crucial “The Joy You Feel,” which suggests that
any marriage to Fabrizio will lead her to sorrow.
The love of the two innocents is just
that: beautifully charming. One might suggest that they are both not in touch
with the real world, but in another sense they are the only ones who do know
what love might be, and the beauty in which they sing about their love
represents some of the highest moments of this opera-musical.
It is not accidental that in my first round
of my musical theater favorites in My
Year 2018, I could not choose a song from this wonderful musical: none of
them are songs you can take home to your favorite local stage. They need
operatic productions, with a complete orchestra with harp, major percussion
instruments, violins, violas, celli, bass, piano, oboe, etc., and great
conductor to oversee this orchestral combination, in this case by the more than
competent Kimberly Grigsby.
So why mightn’t I just say I loved this
work and cried and through it all; all of which I totally did?
One of the greatest singers of the world
was starring in this production, Renée Fleming, the central figure of this
production, a woman whom I adore from her various operatic performances. But
here, I felt, she was toning down her grand voice for several reasons. She
clearly did not want to out-perform the younger singers, particularly her stage
daughter, Clara. But to give Cameron her due, she did quite remarkably with her
fragile soprano voice in representing her own blossoming coming out—and in this
case that really is what it is. In his role as Fabrizio, Houchen literally came
alive as one of the most remarkable young singers of today; I would immediately
advise him to get out of Les Misérables-like
roles and move into better musicals or even operas wherever and whenever they
might appear. He is so talented that he might do remarkable things in many a
Broadway revival of the great musicals of Guettel’s predecessors, from his mother
Mary Rodgers to his grandfather, Richard. I think he might have great in
Sondheim’s Sweeny Todd as the young
sailor in love with Johanna. In some senses he is the real charm of this Piazza production.
Celinde Schoenmaker was wonderful as the
unhappy wife of the also talented Giuseppe. Her evil statement of unhappiness
was a true pleasure of this production.
But where was the great Fleming, fussing
constantly over the possible failures of her stigmatized daughter? Well, of
course, she was stunningly beautiful in the first act song of sorrow about when
you first realize that love has broken down, “Dividing Day,” perhaps a song I
might have included, when I think back, in the 2018 collection of favorites. And
she was quite charming, surely, in her attempt to change the mind of Signor
Naccarelli when he becomes outraged after perceiving the 6-year difference
between his son and Clara’s birth, in the lovely seeking-out-solution song, “Let’s
Walk,” a hard work to perform on a stage based around a circle, but nonetheless
beautifully conceived.
Yet we’d come to hear that glorious voice,
this time even amplified by microphone. Only in her absolutely amazing last
song, “Fable,” did the renowned singer finally shine forth. Here, in expressing
all of her anger for her denial and later change of mind to allow her young daughter’s marriage, she finally
becomes a fierce force right out of Wagner, allowing that all of her and her
husband’s, as well as the Naccarelli’s family’s, notions, of marriage are
nothing of importance. Yes, like Stephen Sondheim has often argued, love is a “fable,”
but there is no possibility to love if you can’t ignore that reality, and
perceive it as a myth completely gone wrong. It is a brilliant “Try to Remember”
moment when you have to give up your own notions of your youth and to imagine
what your children might find in one another, as well a plea for
forgiveness, a demand for the correction of time and previous failures, a hope
for a future in which you yourself cannot be embraced. Finally the great diva
was allowed to come alive. It was worth a visit to this wonderful musical-opera just for that moment.
Los Angeles,
October 15, 2019
Reprinted
from USTheater, Opera, and Performance (October
2019).
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