Star turns don’t get more stunning than the pair delivered by Kim Huber and Valerie Larsen in Musical Theatre Guild’s spectacular one-night-only concert staged reading of Craig Lucas and Adam Guettel’s The Light In The Piazza.

Like Elizabeth Spencer’s novella on which it is based, The Light In The Piazza recounts the tale of 1950s North Carolina matron Margaret Johnson (Huber), vacationing in Florence, Italy with her 26-year old daughter Clara (Larsen), her tobacco executive husband Roy (Brent Schindele) left behind to fend for himself in Winston-Salem.

Enter 20-year-old Fabrizio Naccarelli (Gabriel Navarro), whose meet-cute with Clara in a Florentine town square (the titular piazza) leaves both of them as smitten as two young romantics can be.

It’s a meeting that leaves Margaret shaken, however, for reasons we don’t yet understand, and determined to keep the would-be young lovers from further close encounters.

What she hasn’t reckoned with is Fabrizio’s persistence, or that of his dashingly handsome father Signor Naccarelli (Robert Yacko), who’d like nothing more than for his son to tie the knot with an American heiress.

With two men as bound and determined to make Clara part of la famiglia, albeit for different reasons, it’s perhaps no wonder that mother and daughter soon find themselves invited to a meet-and-greet at the elegant Naccarelli home, welcomed not only by Signor N. but by Signora Naccarelli (Eydie Alyson), Fabrizio’s playboy older brother Giuseppe (Will Collyer), and Giuseppe’s oft-cheated-upon spitfire of a wife Franca (Tal Fox).

What only Margaret knows is that a childhood accident has left Clara with the body (and sexual needs) of an adult but the mind of a child, and her mother with a question: Dare she allow this vacation romance to progress, or should she protect her daughter from the hurt she is certain will come?

Lucas’s book takes characters and plot threads from Spencer’s novella and weaves them seamlessly with Guettel’s complex, soaring melodies and poetic lyrics for a musical likely to capture the heart of every true romantic.

It’s also the kind of show that Musical Theatre Guild specializes in, one that’s rarely staged, whether for lack of box office appeal or a need for spectacular voices, or a combination of both, in other words ripe for a single-performance “concert staged reading” that can be whipped together in a mere Actors Equity-mandated twenty-five hours of rehearsal and staged with only the hint of a scenic design.

Still, as anyone who’s attended even one of MTG’s dozens of “readings” over the past twenty-five or so years can tell you, what audiences get treated to is so close to a fully-staged production that those in attendance may hardly notice the required presence of scripts in hand (rarely even glanced at by the way).

Kirsten Chandler once again proves herself a master at staging an MTG production with utmost ingenuity, finding countless ways to achieve what a less accomplished director might deem impossible, e.g. having Clara’s hat be blown by a gust of wind from atop her head into Fabrizio’s outstretched hand.

And the performances she has elicited from her all-MTG-member cast are in the same league with those who’ve had the benefit of weeks of rehearsal.

Not only is Huber’s transformation into honey-voiced, southern-accented Margaret nothing short of miraculous, she invests the North Carolina matron with oceans of maternal love, her exquisite pipes soaring in the haunting “Dividing Day” and a heartrending “Fable.”

Larsen’s incandescently ethereal Clara matches Huber every step of the way in a role that she was born to play, something she does with equal parts innocence and grit, her own soprano taking angelic flight in “The Beauty Is” and “The Light In The Piazza.”

MTG favorite Navarro is a revelation as Fabrizio, never leaving us a moment’s doubt that his love for Clara is as pure and honest and deeply-felt as young love can be, and just wait until he gets to show off a glorious tenor in “Il Mundo Era Vuoto” and “Love To Me.”

It’s a trio of performances guaranteed to leave audience eyes welling with tears, and supporting turns are uniformly fabulous, from Yacko’s suave, sophisticated Signor Naccarelli to Collyer’s handsome weasel of a Giuseppe to Fox’s firecracker of a Franca to Alyson’s wry, showstopping turn as Signora Naccarelli.

The always fine Schindele has only a couple of non-singing phone calls as Roy, but he gets to join ensemble members Maura M. Knowles and David Zack in assorted cameos along the way.

The production is so gorgeously lit and Jeffrey Schoenberg’s costumes are so 1950s pitch-perfect that the lack of a full production design ends up scarcely noticeable. (The mini statue of David is a particularly clever touch.)

Last but not least, music director Brad Ellis not only elicits heavenly harmonies but conducts a five-piece orchestra (himself on piano, Ray Reinbach on violin, Trevor James on cello, Nate Light on bass, and Alex Rannie on harp) making such musical magic that you almost don’t notice the lack of a full orchestra this musical deserves.

Paul Wong is production coordinator. Leesa Freed is production stage manager and production manager. Stacey Cortez and Christopher Roskowinski are assistant stage managers.

Though most of this review has been written in present tense, if you’re reading it now and did not attend Sunday’s performance, you missed out big-time.

The Light In The Piazza not only represented Musical Theatre Guild at its finest, musical theater itself doesn’t get any better.

The Eli and Edythe Broad Stage, 1310 11th St., Santa Monica.
www.musicaltheatreguild.com

–Steven Stanley
September 29, 2024
Photos: Stan Chandler

Tags: Adam Guettel, Craig Lucas, Los Angeles Theater Review, Musical Theatre Guild, The Broad Stage