Final two shows at the Shaw Festival take you to sunny Italy!

As Labour Day weekend approaches, people are thinking of escaping one last time before the kids go back to school.  If you can't afford a trip to Italy for example, I have the next best thing:  a couple of shows at the Shaw Festival in Niagara-on-the-Lake will take you to sunny Italy with interesting results.

One of the more anticipated shows at the Court House Theatre this season has been the Alan Guettel musical The Light in the Piazza, which premiered in Seattle in 2003; it opened on Broadway two years later, running for over 500 performances.  The musical is based on the 1960 novella by Elizabeth Spencer and was made into a film in 1962, starring Olivia de Havilland and George Hamilton.

The musical took much longer to come to fruition, largely due to composer Mary Rodgers - daughter of legendary composer Richard Rodgers - inability to convince her dad to take on the task of writing the score.  She then turned to her son, Adam Guettel, whose Floyd Collins was performed at Shaw several seasons back.  Guettel finally settled on Craig Lucas to write the book and they were off and running.

Guettel's music is in a word, exquisite.  That being said, you will not come out of the theatre humming a single bit of it.  That is not an unfair comment; simply put, the music is very intricate and genuinely touching, but instantly memorable it is not for most people.  I quite like the score, in fact.

As for the story itself, it tells the tale of an attractive and well-to-do American woman by the name of Margaret Johnson, who leaves her husband at home and travels with her daughter Clara to Europe in the 1950s.  Clara catches the eye of a young Italian man named Fabrizio, who falls hard for the American girl and wants to marry her.  Margaret reluctantly allows Clara and herself to meet Fabrizio's family and with the obvious language barrier, Clara's secret somehow is not revealed to them.

The secret?  Clara is mentally challenged, with the intellect of a twelve-year-old, although she doesn't quite come across that way in the musical.  It is almost beyond comprehension that even with an obvious language barrier between both families, Margaret is unable to convey Fabrizio's family the truth about young Clara.  And when his family finally objects to the match, it is not over Clara's mental capabilities but rather the actual age difference between the two lovers.  Oddly, it is at this point Margaret fights for the two lovers to stay together in spite of Clara's condition rather than continue to try to keep them apart.

To be honest, I didn't find an obvious age difference between Jacqueline Thair's Clara and Jeff Irving's engaging Fabrizio.  In this production, at least, they looked fine to me.  But I also found it hard to believe Clara had the intellect of a twelve-year-old when she finds herself alone with Fabrizio and somehow knows enough to initiate some form of physical contact with him.

The cast, directed here by Jay Turvey, is very good; along with Thair and Irving, Patty Jameson is excellent as mother Margaret; Juan Chioran is debonair and a true Italian as Fabrizio's father, Signor Naccarelli; and Kaylee Harwood is solid as another member of the Naccarelli household, Franca.

The sets are simple and nicely done on the small Court House stage, and they certainly do conjure up images of sunny Italy without overdoing it.

The Light in the Piazza is a nice, thought-provoking production, but certainly will not be for everyone.  The subject matter can be troubling:  how could anyone allow this marriage to go ahead, notwithstanding the situation with Clara?  I mean, would you allow your daughter, mentally challenged or not, to marry into another family you barely know in a foreign land in a very short period of time?  I somehow doubt it.

The show continues at the Court House Theatre until October 13th and rates a three out of four stars.

The other Italian-themed show at Shaw this season is over at the larger Festival Theatre, where Matthew Barber's Enchanted April takes centre-stage through to October 26th.  Based on the novel by Elizabeth von Arnim, the show is directed by Shaw Artistic Director Jackie Maxwell.  The novel has been adapted three times for the stage:  in 1925, in 2000 and then again in 2010 as a lyric musical with music by Richard B. Evans.  The Barber play dates from 2000, moving to Broadway in 2003 where it ran for 143 performances.

The first thing I would suggest you do upon entering the theatre for this show is to check all logic at the door, thank you very much.  It's a fun play, but the plot is really so implausible:  can four ladies from very different walks of life in England, none of whom have ever met before, really coexist in a sun-drenched island paradise for a month?  It does stretch the imagination somewhat, I admit.

The play opens on a grey, rainy London day in 1922, where grief following the war still hovers over the city.  Wanting to escape all that, Lotty Wilton sees an ad in the paper for an Italian villa for rent for the month of April and sets about finding others to join her on this great adventure.  First up is Rose Arnott, wife of Frederick Arnott, a well-heeled London couple; then comes loose cannon Caroline Bramble who views the whole thing as a lark, and matronly Mrs. Graves, who is your traditional stiff upper lip Brit.

The four ladies who finally agree to the adventure are all well cast here, although I did find Moya O'Connell's Lotty Wilton to be a little too "Pollyan-ish" for her own good.  Tara Rosling as Rose Arnott is the reasoned half of the team, as they meet the other two players in this unlikely adventure.  Marla McLean is just sexy enough given the time period as Caroline Bramble, and Donna Belleville is wonderful as the cranky matron who is reluctant to change of any kind.  Yet, she somehow decided this little excursion might just be worthwhile...

Let's not forget the two husbands involved here:  Jeff Meadows as Mellersh Wilton and Patrick Galligan's Frederick Arnott who are both taken aback by their respective wives' decision to spend an Enchanted April in a secluded Italian villa, and then accept an invitation to join the ladies during the second act.

The other two key players in this little adventure are Kevin McGarry as Antony Wilding, the gentleman who rents them the villa and then somehow always seems to be around while they are there, and the housekeeper Costanza, played with great flair by one of my favourite Shaw performers, Sharry Flett.  Imagine not only learning your lines for a production, but learning them all in Italian!  She does, and never misses a beat.

Once you get beyond that grey, grim first act in rainy London, the second act is a riot of colour in William Schmuck's over-the-top Italian villa set.  It just screams exotic and truly lends itself to the wild story that unfolds in the second act.

Is Enchanted April a great play?  No, I wouldn't say so.  But great fun?  You betcha!  Just go and have fun and leave your worries at the door.  Isn't that what good comedy is all about, anyway?

Enchanted April continues at the Festival Theatre until October 26th and rates a strong 3 out of 4 stars.

Enjoy the theatre!

August 29th, 2013.