SpeakEasy Lights ‘Piazza’ from Within

The Light in the Piazza

Book by Craig Lucas; music and lyrics by Adam Guettel; director, Scott Edmiston; musical director/conductor, José Delgado; choreographer, David Connolly; scenic design, Susan Zeeman Rogers; costume design, Charles Schoonmaker; lighting design, Karen Perlow

Cast:

Margaret Johnson, Amelia Broome; Clara Johnson, Erica Spyres; Fabrizio Naccarelli, John Bambery; Signor Naccarelli, Joel Colodner; Signora Naccarelli, Carolynne Warren; Guiseppe Naccarelli, Christian Figueroa; Franca Naccarelli, Alison Eckert; Roy Johnson, Craig Mathers; Tour Guide/Ensemble, Karen Fanale; Priest/Ensemble, Paul Soper; Prostitute/Ensemble, Heather Hannon; Ensemble, Joel Perez

Performances: Now through October 18, SpeakEasy Stage Company, Boston Center for the Arts, 527 Tremont Street, Boston
Box Office: 617-933-8600 or www.BostonTheatreScene.com

The delicate beauty of Adam Guettel's hauntingly romantic The Light in the Piazza is being lovingly realized in the current SpeakEasy Stage production running through October 18 at the Boston Center for the Arts. If you didn't catch this lush and intricately layered Tony Award-winning musical when it toured through Boston last year - or even if you did - do not hesitate to journey back in time to Florence, Italy, circa 1953 where an American mother and her sheltered and "special" grown daughter are awakened to the power of possibilities by love, art, and a different way of looking at life.

While on vacation in Firenze, proper North Carolina wife and mother Margaret Johnson (a transcendent Amelia Broome) brings her innocent daughter Clara (a charming and utterly guileless Erica Spyres) to all of the museums and monuments she first visited with her tobacco tycoon husband Roy on their honeymoon many years ago. In an unconscious effort to recapture some of that sweeping romance that long since vanished from her dutiful marriage, Margaret unwittingly opens the child-like Clara to the beauty and passions of Italy. A chance meeting in the Piazza della Signoria between Clara and the eager young Florentine Fabrizio Naccarelli (a wonderfully sincere and self-effacing John Bambery) soon blossoms into all-consuming love. Suddenly, the carefully constructed world in which Margaret has kept her daughter safe - ever since a head injury rendered her a mental and emotional 12-year-old for life - is seriously threatened. So is the fragile balance of their co-dependent relationship.

As Margaret begins to see her daughter flourish in Fabrizio's love, however, her dream for Clara's happiness - a happiness that no longer exists in her relationship with Roy - outweighs her drive to protect her from complex reality and pain. Torn between conflicting maternal instincts and wrestling with her own conscience, Margaret confronts the ultimate sacrifice - and the ultimate gift - of letting her daughter go.

With the skill of a Florentine sculptor chiseling away at the rough surface to expose the sensitive heart inside the stone, estimable director Scott Edmiston has guided his extraordinary cast to plumb each exquisite nuance from Craig Lucas' charming and witty book and Guettel's penetrating and poetic score. Margaret's struggle between hope and pragmatism, the ambiguity of her daughter's condition (is she really limited or has she never been given the chance to grow?), and the language and cultural barriers that allow the Naccarelli family to see Clara's inner beauty instead of her subtle outer differences all swirl gently but powerfully in this evocative and stirring musical.

Edmiston's gentle brushstrokes, suggested in the pen-and-ink sketches of Susan Zeeman Rogers' fairytale set, render this Piazza more chamber piece than grand opera. Songs become conversations instead of arias. Desires and disappointments are expressed with intimate gestures and tender exchanges instead of dramatic flourishes. The result is a rich tapestry of vivid emotion that weaves the vibrant heartbeat of a colorful family into the meticulous fabric of Margaret's well controlled life.

Each cast member delivers word and song with exquisite grace notes. Bambery's passionate tenor, embracing the words "Clara, Clara" in Fabrizio's "Il Mondo Era Vuoto," is reminiscent of Tony's celebration of the beauty of Maria's name in West Side Story. Spyres' heartbreakingly simple "The Light in the Piazza" elegantly expresses - to her mother and anyone else who would doubt her capabilities - her sexual and emotional awakening to the kind of love that only Fabrizio can give her. Bambery and Spyres' soaring duet, "Say It Somehow," uses notes instead of words to transcend the language barrier and convey with music the feelings that are in their hearts.

The sometimes volatile, sometimes endearing Naccarelli family is ably represented by a steadfast but shrewdly knowing Carolynne Warren as Signora whose fourth wall breaking humor in "Aiutami" comes as a delightful surprise; a swaggering Christian Figueroa as the roving but somehow devoted Giuseppe and a voluptuous Alison Eckert as his tempestuous but also sympathetic wife Franca; and a charming Joel Colodner as the warm, wise, and slightly world weary Signor who shares a leisurely passeggiata or two with Margaret as they negotiate cultures and become friends. This skilled quartet speaks and acts Italian without falling into stereotypes, embodying the essence rather than the affect of a family that wears its heart on its sleeve.

Across the Atlantic, more concerned with the business function he must attend than the concerns his wife raises in a late night telephone call, Craig Mathers as Roy makes what could be a cardboard character a victim of change, as well. The long distance time delay in his stilted overseas conversations with Margaret is painfully ironic, symbolic of their inability to connect on many levels. Unlike Fabrizio and Clara, Roy and Margaret both speak English - but somehow the language barrier between them is far greater than the one their daughter is learning quite easily to bridge.

Ultimately, though, The Light in the Piazza is illuminated by the change in Margaret, and Amelia Broome, with perfect poise and a polite smile that barely mask the crumbling ruins of her life within, shoulders her responsibilities with aching Southern refinement. As she sings "Dividing Day," the point at which she begins to face the emptiness of her marriage, her body tries to hold life together while her voice reveals the knowledge that it has fallen apart. In "Fable," the show's denouement, she combines anger, fear, and finally hope, realizing that her unguarded and genuine daughter may have found someone who truly sees and knows her, and loves her just as she is. Through Clara's eyes, Margaret has seen the light. The line between parent and child has disappeared.

The only disappointment in this otherwise magnificent SpeakEasy Stage production is in the physical rendering of the light and the piazza. The majestic beauty of the streets of Florence that was so splendidly captured at the Lincoln Center Theatre in New York and again at the Colonial Theatre on tour couldn't possibly be recreated in the black box of the Roberts Studio Theatre at the BCA. So, director Edmiston has opted instead to design a cross between rough draft artistic sketch work and moving pillared portals that represent the city's famed domed cathedral and vaulting stonework walls.

What is meant to suggest open space often confines, however, and the ensemble members brought on to rotate caster-based set pieces add visual clutter to what should be intimate scenes. An upstage wall of arches set against a shadowy backdrop is underutilized and could easily serve as the main focal point of a more minimalist approach. Digitized projections could replace the obtrusive floor-to-ceiling diorama, and simple suspended cornices could serve as interior walls.

Warm honeyed lighting should also be used to greater effect, especially in the all important piazza scenes when Clara and Fabrizio are center  stage. Currently the same shadowy effects used to suggest museum interiors and narrow outdoor corridors also seem to dominate daylight scenes, as well.

This minor reservation notwithstanding, the true light in this lovely work shines from within the performers. They have brought great clarity to this adult fable in which many lessons are to be learned.

PHOTOS BY MIKE LOVETT: Erica Spyres as Clara and Amelia Broome as Margaret; John Bambery as Fabrizio and Erica Spyres; Amelia Broome; the ensemble