The Light in the Piazza is based on a novella of the same name, and tells the story of a woman named Margaret and her adult daughter Clara travelling to Italy in the 1950s, a place Margaret hasn't visited since her honeymoon with her now-distant (geographically and emotionally) husband. Clara meets a local boy named Fabrizio and falls in love. Margaret has dedicated her life to protecting her daughter, for reasons that become clear as the story unfolds, but begins to see that perhaps it's time to let Clara grow up in her own way. We also meet Fabrizio's complicated family. This is a story about many kinds of love, Clara and Fabrizio's innocent and sweet new love, the complicated love of several married couples, and perhaps most touching of all, the love between a mother and daughter whose lives have revolved around each other for years.*
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| Margaret and Clara (Kersten Roday and Jenny LeDoux) (photo by Terry Cartie Norton) |
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| Clara and Fabrizio (Jenny LeDoux and Jace LeGarde) (photo by Terry Cartie Norton) |
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| in Firenze (photo by Terry Cartie Norton) |
The music of The Light in the Piazza is something quite special. I remember reading that Adam Guettel first composes all of the music, then goes back and adds lyrics where necessary. Several of the songs are sung party or entirely in Italian, and unlike at the opera, there is no English translation available. But with music this emotional and expressive, you don't need to know exactly what Fabrizio is saying in "Il Mondo Era Vuoto" to understand what he's feeling (at the end of the song the man sitting next to me turned to me and said, "well he's hooked!"). Some of the singing is neither English nor Italian, just a wordless vocalization that is pure musical expression, as in the touching love song "Say It Somehow." Fabrizio and Clara don't speak the same language, but somehow they understand each other. Similarly, the audience doesn't need to have the words spelled out to understand the emotion of the scene.* Music Director Kyle Picha directs a 16-piece orchestra that includes a harp and a large string section, providing a lush rich sound that almost makes it feel like an Italian opera.
As Margaret sings in the final number, love may be a "Fable," but The Light in the Piazza makes you believe. It's a wistful, dreamy, romantic fairy tale. But it's not all sweetness and light, there's enough harsh reality to keep you grounded. Clara has some challenges in her life that make her different, but that doesn't mean she doesn't deserve to experience the fullness that life has to offer. The Light in the Piazza shows us that maybe we're not our flaws or weaknesses, we're not our past, and we all deserve to find someone who truly see us, and loves us anyway.
Seeing the show now for the third time, and maybe because I'm older, I realized that this is really Margaret's story. She gets the final number, singing about letting go of her ideas of what her daughter's life should be, and letting her choose her own path, wishing her the best even if it may not go as expected. And Kersten Rodau deservedly gets the last bow at curtain call. It's a beautiful story of all kinds of love, chief among them that of parent and child.
If you can’t get away to someplace warm this spring break, go to Duluth and bask in the glow of The Light in the Piazza, playing through March 30. And anytime you plan a trip to Duluth (which any good Minnesotan does at least once a year), check out the schedule at Duluth Playhouse and Zeitgeist across the street from the NorShor - I'm already planning a trip to see my favorite musical RENT this summer. Because what could be better than RENT in Duluth in the summertime?!
