The Light in the Piazza - Review

Royal Festival Hall, London


****


Music and lyrics by Adam Guettel
Book by Craig Lucas
Directed by Daniel Evans

Renée Fleming

Crossing the Atlantic, Adam Guettel’s The Light in the Piazza deploys some of the finest musical theatre talent in town to tell its curiously enchanting love story in a plot that upends one of society’s most deeply rooted taboos and prejudices.

The young and beautiful Clara Johnson together with her mother Margaret are American tourists footloose in Florence. A chance encounter with Fabrizio, a handsome Florentine, ignites a youthful, passionate love - and as Margaret anxiously frets over her daughter's emotions, a carefully nuanced story unfolds.

To say much more of the plot would spoil. Suffice to say that the unexpected twists offer a touching and unconventional portrayal of love, affection and the challenges of honesty that make for a rare and wonderful evening.

Making their professional debuts on this side of the pond are Broadway and opera’s leading lady Renée Fleming as Margaret, alongside Instagram and Hollywood star Dove Cameron playing Clara. Fleming’s classical voice stands out as a beacon of aural magnificence, effortlessly filling the Royal Festival Hall and notwithstanding the excellence that surrounds her on stage, Fleming’s powerfully poignant performance is worth the ticket price on its own. Cameron's Clara is an unexpectedly complex piece to deliver - and as the tale unfolds, she turns in an act of remarkably measured and touching sensitivity.

These two American women are the only players on stage allowed to perform in their native tongue. Everyone else has to masquerade in cod Italian - and if there is but one niggle of the piece it is the irritation of massed, cliched Latin dialects. The singing however is top notch. Rob Houchen’s Fabrizio captures the combination of Houchen’s physical and vocal beauty - the love that sparks between him and Cameron is delightfully plausible and convincing.

Alex Jennings is Fabrizio’s father - a man who we learn has never lost his admiration for the fairer sex, while Liam Tamne and Celinde Schoenmaker play his son and daughter-in-law. Guettel has liberally sprinkled his libretto with narrative-advancing solo turns throughout his cast, and under Daniel Evans’ perceptive direction the musical theatre treats are frequent.

For a simply presented semi-staged show, the highly spec’d creative work only enhances the production. Mark Henderson’s lighting offers an enchanting brilliance to Robert Jones’ delightfully suggestive set - as, sat above the action, Kimberly Grigsby conducts the Opera North orchestra in a lavish treatment of Guettel’s score.

Only on until July 4th before an international tour, The Light In The Piazza is a must see for all who appreciate modern writing and quality musical theatre.

Runs until July 4th

Marry Me A Little - Review

St James Studio, London

****

Songs by Stephen Sondheim
Conceived and Developed by Craig Lucas and Norman Rene
Directed by Hannah Chissick

Simon Bailey and Laura Pitt-Pulford

Marry Me A Little is a little known creation strung together from an eclectic mix of Stephen Sondheim compositions. A 17 number song-cycle, compiled by Craig Lucas and Norman René, it draws from a selection of 45 songs hitherto un-performed and which in some cases had simply been chopped from shows that were themselves to become pillars of the musical theatre canon. The song-cycle is a much maligned phrase in modern writing - oft times proving to be little more than a collection of works of dubious merit, strung around a clichéd framework. Marry Me A Little is a lot more than that. It's an ultimately doomed fairy-tale comment upon the hopes and failures in relationships, viewed through the sometimes hopeful but often dyspeptic eyes of a pair of 30-something Manhattanites. 

With Sondheim's writing and the talents of Laura Pitt-Pulford and Simon Bailey on stage, this hour long novelty was only ever going to make for stunning entertainment. Together, the two actors' harmonies and counterpoints are sublime whilst their mastery of humour and pathos is a treat.

A handful of memorable moments: The Cole Porter-like ingenuity of A Moment With You is a treat of razor-sharp wit. Pitt-Pulford’s glorious Can That Boy Foxtrot, in which her acknowledged triple-threat talents are put to good use switching between a bevy of characters, only augmented by canny use of a baseball cap. Bailey’s Bang! (now there’s a phrase I never thought I’d write) is a song dropped from A Little Night Music that was to have been sung by Count Carl-Magnus recounting his sexual conquests. Bailey’s performance as the Count in Guildford last year was a tour-de-force of pomp and bluster and hearing him now sing Bang! made one reflect that perhaps Sondheim shouldn’t have excised the song from the finished show.

Hannah Chissick's direction, together with Nick Winston’s choreography brings some fine relief to the characters. David Randall’s piano work lends a confident accompaniment throughout, all adding to Marry Me A Little proving a cutely waspish summer treat for the capital.

Runs until 10th August 2014