Playwright: Adam Guettel ( music/lyrics ) , Craig Luca ( book ) . At: Marriott Theatre in Lincolnshire. Tickets: 847-634-0200 www.MarriottTheatre.com; $45 ( plus tax/fees ) . Runs through: Sept. 20
After dealing with insurance company bureaucracy all day I was ready to shout "Aiutami!""Help me!"along with the Naccarelli family in the boisterous comic-opera quintet which opens Act II of The Light in the Piazza. Fortunately, musical director Ryan T. Nelson and company needed no help sailing through the contrapuntal rhythms and rich harmonies of Adam Guettel's shimmering score, with its wonderful orchestral details for strings, harp and woodwinds ( David Siegel's always-vibrant orchestral reductions ) .
This 2005 Tony Award-winning musical ( which had its world premiere at Chicago's Goodman Theatre ) is based on the familiar 1960s tearjerker film and novel about Clara, a beauty of 26 who never will be more than 12 emotionally. Although Clara is sociable, bright and a quick learner, her parents doubt her ability to live in a mature world, let alone fall in love and marry, yet that's the story of the show.
Even more, Piazza is about Clara's mother, Margaret, who takes her to Italy where love's young dream blossoms in Florence when Clara meets Fabrizio. Now middle-aged and in a loveless marriage, Margaret remembers well the romantic Florence of her own young womanhood. What to do? Do you protect your "special" daughter but break her heart? Do you send her into Fabrizio's tender embrace and hope for the best? Margaret must measure the rue of her own life against the freshbut fragilerose of Clara.
Bridging Broadway and opera, The Light in the Piazza requires three leads who can belt and/or soar and it certainly has them in popular Chicago veteran Mary Ernster as Margaret, and in gifted young pros Summer Smart and Max Quinlan as Clara and Fabrizio. Ernster is a fine dramatic actor who also imparts a necessary wryness to Margaret, who serves as both narrator and participant in the action. Smart is radiant and petulant by turns, never acting down to her character's emotional age. Quinlan, with his Italianate curled hair, is a trim and boyish opera tenor who stops the show early in Act I with the soaring "Il Mondo Era Vuoto," kinda like stepping into "Celeste Aida" in the opening minutes of Verdi's opera. They are supported by a strong ensemble, notably veteran Gene Weygandt skillfully underplaying Fabrizio's well-intentioned father.
Although the setting is 1953 Florence, Italy, this is not a show of elaborate sets, costumes or dance ( dance principals Sasha Vargas and Peyton Royal shadow Clara and Fabrizio ) . These spectacle elements are good-looking and perfectly suitable but less ingenious and smaller in scale than most Marriott shows. This is, after all, a study in characters rather than action and the focus properly is on the emotional drama and romantic passion which are thoroughly and intelligently wrought in Guettel's Broadway opera score.