Photo By Joan Marcus

2005 CCM grad Aaron Lazar is starring in the Tony Award- winning Light in the Piazza in New York City with Kelli O'Hara.

THE LIGHT IN THE PIAZZA
Adam Guettel has arrived

October 20 and 21 afforded me an unusual opportunity to see two works in two days by the much praised young musical theater composer and lyricist Adam Guettel. His 1996 work, Floyd Collins, received a powerful production by the University of Cincinnati's College-Conservatory of Music, which I saw on Friday evening; the night before I sat in the Vivian Beaumont Theatre at Lincoln Center in New York City to see The Light in the Piazza, Guettel's 2005 Tony Award winner.

The shows are remarkably sophisticated, but radically different in mood, tone and approach. Collins is a dark, brooding, personal piece about an ambitious caver in 1925 who becomes trapped underground. The efforts to free him are a catalyst for many events -- from the first true media frenzy (it was the early days of radio) to a study of the dynamics within a troubled family and a portrait of a young man whose big dreams seem thwarted by circumstances, perhaps epitomizing a nation struggling for greater recognition during troubling times.

Piazza is another time altogether: It's 1953 and a woman from Winston-Salem, N.C., travels to Florence where she and her husband visited many years earlier. The ebullience of post-World War II America is present in her jaunty, optimistic nature, and the happy relief of the Italians she meets that the war is behind them and life is returning to normal is palpable. But despite the beautiful visuals -- Piazza is simply gorgeous: Michael Yeargan won the 2005 Tony Award for the columns, sun-washed sandstone plazas and streets, and Christopher Akerlind took home is own Tony for a lighting design that emphasized glowing skies and sinister nights -- there is a serious undertone.

Margaret Johnson (Tony winner Victoria Clark) shelters her daughter, Clara (Kelli O'Hara), from much of life, despite her age, 26. We learn that Clara has suffered a traumatic head injury at the age of 10, when her emotional development stopped, despite her maturation into a beautiful woman. This revelation comes about slowly, revealed in bits and pieces as Clara is pursued by a handsome young Italian, Fabrizio (Aaron Lazar, a 2000 graduate of UC's College-Conservatory of Music).

The script for Piazza (crafted by respected playwright Craig Lucas) is sophisticated in its characterizations and their motives. Using frequent asides to the audience, the candid, charming Clara reveals Margaret's own misgivings about holding her daughter back from emotional satisfaction, while simultaneously revealing the emptiness that has crept into her own marriage. Her husband is critical of her liberal handling of Clara -- who's name means clear and bright. O'Hara's interpretation of the young woman (she too was nominated for a Tony Award) is lovely: childish and sweet, but also direct and perceptive. Lucas does not lead us down a simple path: While the story has a "happy" ending, it is one with no guarantees for happiness beyond the moment. It asks us to have faith.

Guettel's music for Piazza steps beyond the rhythmic folk and blues echoes of Collins: It's a more symphonic score with lush orchestrations that include a harp and violins. It too has a sunny quality, but also more emotional breadth and depth than I've heard in a new Broadway show score in years. Floyd Collins showed a promise in talent that has kept attention on Adam Guettel for nearly a decade; with the arrival of The Light in the Piazza, he has emerged as one of the great creators for the musical stage. This thrilling and subtle work will become a work loved by sophisticated audiences for years to come. Grade: A

ABSURD PERSON SINGULAR
A weary reprise of Brit wit

My recent excursion to New York City also enabled me to take in the Manhattan Theatre Club's recently opened revival of Absurd Person Singular, a 1973 comedy with ironic undertones by veteran British playwright Alan Ayckbourn. He's a prolific writer (more than 60 plays), both comedies and dramas -- although he's probably best known for the sort of witty pieces of social "commentary" like this one.

Set on three successive Christmas Days ("last Christmas," "this Christmas" and "next Christmas") and in three different kitchens, Absurd Person Singular is populated by three couples. Jane and Sidney Hopcroft (Clea Lewis and Alan Ruck) are bourgeois up-and-comers; she's an obsessive cleaner, he's a rising if mundane developer. Ronald and Marian Brewster-Wright (Paxton Whitehead and Deborah Rush) are more upper crust; he's a banker and she's his snobby second wife. Eva and Geoffrey Jackson (Mireille Enos and Sam Robards) are the bohemians; he's an artsy architect with a roving eye, and she's his sensitive but oh-so-opinionated partner.

Christmas No. 1 (Act 1) at the Hopcrofts' is played as a comedy of kitchen slapstick, ending up with her locked outside in a driving downpour. The second act takes place in the Jacksons' flat, where Eva's catatonic (she does not speak during the entire act) about Geoffrey's decision to take up with another woman; she attempts several comic suicides while the others swirl around her obliviously. For the third Christmas (Act 3), at the Brewster-Wrights' oh-so-British Victorian home, clubby but chillingly under-heated, we learn that Marian has descended into an alcoholic stupor, that Geoffrey and Eva are still together, although their fortunes have declined; and the Hopcrofts have flourished.

Each of the three acts offers an impressive set change; each kitchen (designed by the renowned John Lee Beatty) is remarkable in its own personality -- from Jane and Sidney's spotless suburban with new cabinets and a gleaming appliances (including a washing machine, which is a mystery to Marian), to Geoffrey and Eva's cluttered but artsy urban apartment with high windows and traffic noise, to the so-called kitchen at Ronald and Marian's "estate," more a sitting room with a fridge and a stove tucked away in an alcove.

The comedy is typically British, understated and very verbal. The best moments come in the second act as Eva tries every mode her benumbed mind can conjure to end it all. The physical slapstick is impeccably presented, and the actors were a pleasure to watch.

Overall, however, Absurd Person Singular doesn't much go anywhere. The seeming triumph of Jane and Sidney -- they force the others into a demeaning party game in the third act -- should be more sharply ironic. It just feels odd, in part because the Hopcrofts are portrayed as amusingly bland rather than aggressive social climbers.

The direction by John Tillinger is without much bite; the actors have admirable comic skills, but other than Enos's amusing physical comedy in the second act, an infectious giggle effected by Lewis as Jane, and Whitehead's befuddlement over changing a light bulb, the show is a tough go. They're all "absurd," I suppose -- and lost in their own self-centered "singular" worlds. Occasionally amusing, yes; recommended, no. Grade: C

CONTACT RICK PENDER: rpender@citybeat.com