The Light in the Piazza

Gabriel over at Modern Fabulousity already raved about this musical, which is easily the best of the season. I don't have much to add to his review other than that he's right about how gorgeous the whole thing is. It's spellbinding to look at -every color choice in costuming is perfection and the lighting -holy mother of god, the lighting - would be moving in and of itself, even if you were to remove the evocative musical score (please don't). The lighting in this show ought to win five Tonys...just to make up for the fact that stuff like Wicked (a fun show) gets nominated for lighting even though its aesthetic choices are questionable at best: 'Let's see...it's a ballad with a green character. Let's use color filters with designs just to mix it up!'. But I don't mean to get distracted with last season's memories. It's just that modern musicals tend to err on the side of busy / gaudy / over produced and with stuff like Brooklynstinking up the theater these days, you just got to have the elegance and beauty of something like Light in the Piazza to restore your faith in musical theater.

I wasn't crazy about the plot or even a couple of performances but the music was strong enough to make me forget that I was annoyed with the central character of Clara more often than not. And toward the end, even as I tired of the narrative hijinx, I found the whole thing inexplicably moving. Go see it.