With her family away at the 1965 state fair, Francesca Johnson looks forward to a rare four days alone on her Iowa farm. But when ruggedly handsome National Geographic photographer Robert Kincaid pulls into her driveway seeking directions, what happens in those four days may very well alter the course of Francesca's life. Based on the best-selling novel, and developed by a Pulitzer- and Tony Award-winning creative team, this new musical captures the lyrical expanse of America's heartland along with the yearning entangled in the eternal question, 'What if...?'"
The Bridges of Madison County stars four-time Tony Award nominee Kelli O'Hara (South Pacific, The Pajama Game) and Steven Pasquale (Rescue Me, reasons to be pretty). It features a score by Tony Award winner Jason Robert Brown (Parade, The Last Five Years) and a libretto by Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize winner Marsha Norman (The Color Purple, The Secret Garden). It will be directed by Tony Award winner Bartlett Sher (The Light in the Piazza, South Pacific), who reunites with his celebrated Tony Award-winning South Pacific design team, including scenic designer Michael Yeargan, costume designer Catherine Zuber, and lighting designer, Donald Holder. Sound Design is by Jon Weston (How to Succeed..., The Color Purple).
'The Bridges of Madison County' is a ravishingly beautiful musical play based on the phenomenally popular 1992 weeper about a four-day love affair between an Iowa farm wife from Italy and a worldly photographer. In other words, this is unblushing Harlequin Romance-style material bound in top-quality leather. So many intelligent, gifted artists are involved in this adaptation that we wish the objective were deeper than a high-toned bodice ripper with comic-relief detours into conventional Broadway. But Kelli O'Hara and Steven Pasquale, magnificently magnetic as Francesca and Robert, make the ripping feel like real heartbreak. And director Bartlett Sher and his creative team from 'South Pacific' are storytellers who understand the luscious power of simplicity.
Despite some beautiful music from Jason Robert Brown and exquisite singing from Kelli O'Hara and Steven Pasquale, 'Bridges,' which is directed by Bartlett Sher, is a curiously somber and remote musical. These problems are caused partly by a Marsha Norman book that captures much but misses the movie's smoldering passions, and to no small extent by the tendency of both these stars to remain very much in their own worlds and to play the end of their affaire de coeur right from the start.
Videos