Winner of six Tony Awards including Best Original Score, The Light in the Piazza is set to romance Melbourne audiences later this year when it opens at the Arts Centre Melbourne for a limited season from 28 October.
Produced by Life Like Company, best known for the 2014 production of Sondheim and Lapine’s Passion and the award-winning City of Angels in 2015, this new Australian production of The Light in the Piazza is the first fully staged professional production of the show to be seen in Australasia.
Written by Adam Guettel (music and lyrics) and Craig Lucas (book), The Light in the Piazza is an adaptation of Elizabeth Spencer’s novella of the same name. The award-winning score by Adam Guettel (Floyd Collins, Saturn Returns) is full of romance and passion with music and lyrics that explore and illustrate emotions through soaring melodies.
Taking place in Florence, Italy in the summer of 1953, Margaret Johnson – an elegant and strong-willed Southern woman, is touring the Tuscan countryside with her daughter, Clara. When a gust of wind blows Clara’s hat into the hands of Fabrizio, a young Italian gentleman, neither age nor language nor familial disapproval can stop their whirlwind love affair.
As The Light in the Piazza unfolds, a secret is revealed: in addition to the cultural differences between the young lovers, Clara is not quite all that she appears. Unable to suppress the truth about her daughter, Margaret is forced to reconsider not only Clara’s future, but her own hopes as well.
Written by Adam Guettel (music and lyrics) and Craig Lucas (book), The Light in the Piazza is an adaptation of Elizabeth Spencer’s novella of the same name. The sumptuous and breathtaking award-winning score by Adam Guettel (Floyd Collins, Saturn Returns) underpins two heart-warming love stories – Margaret’s love of Florence and her daughter Clara’s love for Fabrizio, her Italian suitor.
Directed by Theresa Borg with musical direction by Vanessa Scammell and choreography by Jo-Anne Robinson, The Light in the Piazza features Chelsea Plumley, Josh Piterman, Anton Berezin, Madison Green and Jeremy Stanford, Colin Dean, some of Australia’s most established musical theatre talent alongside impressive newcomers Genevieve Kingsford as Clara and Jonathan Hickey as Fabrizio.
With soaring operatic melodies that set it apart from most contemporary musical theatre, The Light in the Piazza is a story about mothers and daughters, fathers and sons, and the deeply intertwined emotions of love and loss.
“A work of such consummate beauty, truth, energy and accomplishment that you leave the theatre filled with joy and revived by hope for the future.” – The New York Observer
The Light in the Piazza
Playhouse – Arts Centre Melbourne, 100 St. Kilda Road, Melbourne
Season: 28 October – 6 November 2016
Bookings: www.artscentremelbourne.com.au (tickets on sale from 28 July 2016)
For more information, visit: www.lifelikecompany.com for details.
Image: Jonathan Hickey and Genevieve Kingsford feature in The Light in the Piazza – photo by Colin Page Photography