From Italy with Love

Stage

COMPOSER ADAM GUETTEL has a slight handicap. He’s the grandson of the legendary Richard Rodgers——which means, of course, that Guettel’s work is invariably compared to that of his illustrious ancestor. Yet such comparisons, as the saying goes, are odious. Guettel writes in a more complex, operatic style, and his songs are generally diegetic——specifically written for a play’s characters——so they’re not likely to wind up as pop hits.

Still, Guettel continues to build his own reputation. His score for Floyd Collins (which played at the Old Globe in 1999) won a 1996 Obie, and in 2005 he took Tonys for his lush score and orchestrations for Light in the Piazza. That musical, which garnered 11 Tony nominations and four other wins, finally gets its local premiere at Lamb’s Players Theatre September 19–November 2. It’s an appropriate ensemble, since the Lamb’s folks have often demonstrated the vocal chops to handle Guettel’s soaring melodies.

Piazza, based on an Elizabeth Spencer novella but probably more familiar from the 1962 film, is the heart-tugging tale of a mother and daughter traveling in Italy. The young woman falls for a handsome local, but the mother resists the romance for a reason that eventually be comes clear. Robert Smyth directs, with Deborah Smyth, Season Duffy and Chanlon Jay Kaufman in the major roles.

THE DROWSY CHAPERONE, despite its title, does not concern prom-night wish-fulfillment. It’s a nostalgic comic musical that burst onto Broadway in 2006, winning five Tonys, including book, score and costume design (by San Diego native Gregg Barnes). Although Chaperone lost the outstanding-musical statuette to Jersey Boys, it snagged the top-musical awards from the New York Drama Critics Circle and the Drama Desk, and it continues to pull much green onto the Great White Way. The show is finally traveling our way, thanks to Broadway/ San Diego, September 23-28 in the Civic Theatre.

Despite its numerous awards, Chaperone still probably elicits a “Wha. . . ?” from many theater-goers, partly because of its quirky title. But it has charmed audiences throughout North America with its homage to 1920s musicals. The Bob Martin–Don McKellar script centers on a theater fan, in need of cheering, who dips into his record collection to play his two-LP set of an overlooked (fictional) 1928 Broadway tuner, The Drowsy Chaperone. As each song plays, it gets re-created by singers and dancers who magically transform his drab living room. The music and lyrics, by Lisa Lambert and Greg Morrison, capture the style and slang of that roaring decade ——which included “drowsy” as a gentler term for “intoxicated.”

EVE ENSLER, most noted for The Vagina Monologues, has expanded her focus. The playwright’s The Good Body, which opens the San Diego Repertory Theatre’s 33rd season (September 6-28), is, like Monologues, drawn from interviews with women in many countries, this time describing how they feel about their bodies. The ubiquitous and über-talented Delicia Turner Sonnenberg directs a crackerjack cast: Karole Foreman, DeAnna Driscoll and Linda Libby. Later in the season, Foreman is represented again, this time as a writer, with The Princess and the Black-Eyed Pea (November 23–December 21).

MOONLIGHT STAGE PRODUCTIONS’ Les Misérables, August 20-31, is the last offering ever on the Moonlight stage in Vista’s Brengle Park. But that doesn’t mean Moonlight is in eclipse. Instead, the company will present its 2009 season of summer musicals in a sparkling new stage house, with construction slated to start this September. It’s the fulfillment of a longtime goal of artistic director Kathy Brombacher, who has steered Moonlight from its modest 1981 beginning——a raised platform for the performers, folding chairs for the audience——to a 900-seat amphitheater with lawn seating for dozens more and an on-site restaurant. Enclosing and enlarging the stage house will protect walls, floor and rigging from the weather and also provide space for dressing rooms, costume and scene workshops and other theatrical niceties.

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