The “Light in the Piazza” shines brightly at Great Escape
MARSHALL, Mich.–One of the hardest parts of being a parent is letting go—especially if you are the parent of an adult child who is in need of more protection than most other adult children.
Nonetheless, our children grow and they leave the nest. Sometimes they even find their way down the most unexpected of paths.
The Light in the Piazza, currently playing at Great Escape Theater Company, is a touching musical of mother and daughter and the love that exists between them. It is a musical filled with possibilities, with hope, and with the challenge of letting go and saying goodbye.
Mother and daughter are on vacation in Italy when the daughter falls in love with a young Italian man.
Maika Van Oosterhout plays the daughter, Clara Johnson, and she shines as the star of the show. She has a beautiful innocence to her and captures the child-like nature of the role. Oosterhout also has an amazing voice that is fully up to the operatic demands of this particular show.
The director, Randy Lake, announced before the show that this is a staged reading and the actors would have scripts in their hands. Oosterhout was one of the few who rarely had a script and was comfortable with all of it, despite the size of the role.
The extent to which it is a staged reading varies. It is fully costumed and there is a minimal set built that worked for several different settings on the small stage of Great Escape. There are chairs lining either side of the stage and they are pulled out to act as furniture when needed. Some actors have scripts and others do not.
Debbie Culver fills the role of the mother, Margaret Johnson. She excels as an actress, and very much captures both the heartbreak and the loneliness of a mother trying to do what is best for her daughter alone in a foreign country. She has a wonderful energy and brings a lot of character to the role, especially doing well with the the accent. As a singer, her performance was a bit mixed on opening night–powerful and moving in some numbers, and noticeably weaker in others. The instrument is definitely there, though.
Although she doesn’t have a large part, Tami S. Snyder-Knutson as Signora Naccarelli shows impressive vocal pipes with the few songs that she does have.
Jared Heddinger shows much earnestness and innocence as Fabrizio. He also does a wonderful job with the Italian and the halting English. It is easy to believe that he doesn’t speak English.
Equally impressive is the chemistry between Heddinger and Oosterhout. They make great eye contact and leaned in to each other like two young people falling in love. They make the love story all the more powerful—how could these two lovers be denied when the bond and connection between them is so palpable. Margaret describes it as a “deep well of feeling” and the two actors really tap into that.
Light in the Piazza is a challenging musical to do. It requires the actors to speak a lot of Italian, sing a very difficult score and play very emotionally demanding roles. The Great Escape production captures the beauty and longing of the show. Lake keeps the production simple, and focuses in on the essentials. The storytelling takes center stage and each of the ensemble commits to telling their part in it. While it isn’t fully produced, it is still a moving production that does the show great justice.