by Craig Lucas
Music and Lyrics by Adam Guettel
Directed by Robert McQueen
An Acting Up Stage Presentation
at the Berkeley Street Theatre Downstairs
January 30-February 21, 2010

   Based on a novella by Elizabeth Spencer, Craig Lucas’s libretto and Adam Guettel’s music create a wonderful fable about the complications of love in a mode that carries the American musical back to romantic opera. And the young Acting Up Stage company, under Robert McQueen’s direction, delivers an accomplished production within a tight budget. The economic limitations have evidently led to a deficient set design by Phillip Silver who shows nothing of a mellow gold Florence, circa 1953. This is supposed to be a “new old world” that fascinates the American mother and daughter who visit it, somewhat like updated Henry James characters. Silver’s dreary pale grey scrims possibly mean to be a sort of neutral or blank canvas on which the director and cast could paint an autumnal miracle, but the dullness works against even his own lighting, which has some wonderful sequences, and against some of the truly apt costumes by Alex Amini that have the right colours by which to express many of the characters’ temperaments. The relatively shallow stage also raises problems for the choreography, and characters often seem to be squeezing around corners or disappearing and reappearing without any sense of mystery. Yet, the production overcomes these deficiencies to deliver a warm, humane story in which a middle-aged, well-to-do American mother from Winston-Salem discovers what real love can be like when her young daughter, mentally affected by a childhood accident, falls for a young Italian boy of almost ineffable innocent passion.

   Two things stand out in this production. The first is Adam Guettel’s wondrous music and lyrics. The grandson of legendary Richard Rodgers, Guettel abandons his distinctly American musical idiom (most palpably expressed in Floyd Collins) to waft his themes on the wings of melody that owe a lot to his grandfather but probably more to European opera. He has re-arranged the score for this production essentially for strings, and McQueen’s production uses a five-piece ensemble that streamlines the music without losing the slight atonality or the superbly tender or soaring melodies. Without ever striving to imitate Broadway conventions, Guettel’s lyrics complement the music’s expressiveness by their strong emotionality that often has a charming glaze. Which brings me to the second indisputable strength of the production: the cast that often sings marvelously well and often acts even better.

   Patty Jamieson plays Margaret Johnson, the American mother, trapped in a loveless marriage, who is overly protective of her twenty-something daughter Clara. In the original Broadway production, Victoria Clark gave one of the most remarkable performances in musical theatre as Margaret, registering her sweetly bitter maternal regrets and dreams with stunning efficacy and poignancy. But Bartlett Sher’s direction could not stave off an overall disjunctiveness in the production, and her performance stood somewhat to the side and above the rest of the show—excepting the magical décor and lighting. In the Canadian version, Jamieson, while no match for Ms. Clark in terms of show-stopping flash and depth of conflicted emotions, sings well and suggests Margaret Johnson’s maternal over-protectiveness as well as the woman’s disappointment in marriage and life. McQueen goes for a comedy of miscommunication in the early scenes, and this scores dividends for Jamieson and, especially, Jeff Lillico in the role of Fabrizio, the young Italian boy whose awkwardness is comic but whose romantic innocence is a sort of magical cocoon around himself. Lillico has already proved his acting chops at Soulpepper, but I never expected him to be a singer. Well, though his singing is not up to Fabrizio’s opening solo (sung in Italian, at that!), it is certainly well up to the character’s endearing juvenile charm and sincerity and passion. In concert with Jacquelyn French’s amazing Clara, radiant with youth’s ardour and frustration, he sketches an indelible portrait of one for whom every look, touch, sigh, and outcry comes from the heart. Rounding out these principals are other distinguished players: Michael Torontow as handsome, sexy Giuseppe (Fabrizio’s older brother), Tracy Michailidis as Franca (Giuseppe’s wife), Christina Gordon as Signora Naccarelli (who has to resort to English in a comic plot intervention in Act 2), and, best of all, Juan Chioran as elegant Signor Naccarelli in a performance that is distinguished by his stage presence and fine singing voice as, indeed, it also is by his wit, timing, a little bit of sexy naughtiness, and humanity.

   The libretto works so well that the Italian passages need no translation, which also suggests that the music itself renders spoken language less than essential at times to the fable. And there is one stunning sequence in Act 2 where the variously conflicted characters interact and are orchestrated in a manner that transcends description. It is one of several moments that reveal just how good this musical really is, and far above the usual Broadway fare. Of course, being a musical and a romantic one, at that, problems are solved at the end—a little melodramatically but movingly—and the story carries us to a shimmering plane of love. 

photo: Joanna McDermott

pic 1 (L-R): Patty Jamieson (Margaret), Jeff Lillico (Fabrizio), Jacquelyn French (Clara)

pic 2 (L-R): Juan Chioran (Signor Naccarelli) and Patty Jamieson (Margaret)

pic 3 9L-R): Jacquelyn French (Clara) and Patty Jamieson (Margaret)



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