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Arts & Entertainment

Let there be "Light in the Piazza"

Dunwoody United Methodist stages four performances of Tony Award-winning musical

It’s the summer of 1953. Margaret and her adult daughter Clara have traveled from their home in Winston-Salem to Italy. On their first morning in Florence, they are preparing for a day of sightseeing when a breeze lifts Clara’s hat off her head and carries it across the square, where a dashing young Italian man catches it in mid-air.

You guessed it: Love at first sight.

Clara and Fabrizio are smitten, and their instant and profound chemistry is what sets the plot of  “The Light in the Piazza” into motion.

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For some reason, Margaret clearly believes her daughter has no business falling in love or considering such a thing as marriage.  But — why?

Theater lovers can find out by attending one of four performances of the 2005 Broadway musical that’s being staged by Dunwoody United Methodist Church. The show opens Thursday and continues through Sunday. 

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Presenting a musical in the thick of the summer has become a tradition for DUMC and its ambitious theater arts department. Under the direction of Robert Edwards, the church has also produced such shows as “Guys and Dolls,” “Godspell,” “High School Musical” and “The Secret Garden.”

“The Light in the Piazza” is particularly ambitious because it requires three significantly accomplished singers in the roles of Margaret, Clara and Fabrizio (Broadway’s original Fabrizio was Matthew Morrison, who plays the glee club teacher on TV’s “Glee”).

“Piazza” earned 11 Tony nominations and went on to win six Tony awards, including for best original score. The lush music is by Adam Guettel, grandson of legendary Broadway composer Richard Rodgers.

“It really is gorgeous music that just sweeps you away and puts melodies in your head,” said Robert Edwards, DUMC’s performing arts director who helms “Piazza.” Edwards considers the music itself, “with echoes of Rodgers and Hammerstein, to almost be its own character in the show.”

Unlike plenty of musical theater chestnuts, “The Light in the Piazza” is not “your typical happy-go-lucky, feel-good piece of entertainment,” Edwards said. “It’s a beautiful love story set in Italy, but at times it’s a dark story, which some may remember from the movie (of 1962, with Olivia de Havilland and Yvette Mimieux as the mother and daughter and George Hamilton as the suitor).

Edwards has called “Piazza”  the “best musical you’ve never heard of,” and has wanted to do it for some time. But he wasn’t sure he could find the singers who could tackle the challenging score. He started to think otherwise less than a year ago, when sitting in his office.

“I would be working in my office while our women’s choir was rehearsing, and from one week to the next, I kept hearing this one gorgeous voice,” he recalled. He got to the bottom of it. The voice belonged to Gayle Mitrano, a member of the congregation who had played Maria in “West Side Story” back in high school, but who hadn’t been on stage since college in 1976.

“I kept hearing this amazing female voice,” Edwards recalled, “and it dawned on me that maybe this woman could be the mother. It was quite a challenge to find a mother who could pull it off visually but could also really sing the role. That was the real hurdle. This is a demanding role; she has four big songs.”

He eventually approached Mitrano and the next thing you know, she had bought the cast recording, “listened to it a thousand times, and then came to me prepared to sing the songs,” Edwards said. “You could say it was sort of a Christmas miracle that here was our Margaret, right here in our midst.”

“I’m thrilled to be doing this role,” Mitrano said. “I’ve made it into a personal challenge for myself and I’m having a ball. With my kids older and able to drive, I have more time available. So this was the perfect time, the perfect role, the perfect opportunity for me.”

A native of this area, Mitrano especially enjoys that she gets to play a strong Southern woman. The face of an old friend’s mother popped into her head when she first read the script. In the end, she said the character of Margaret that she has created is a blend of herself, some of her friends’ mothers, and her own mother, Dot, who lives in Roswell.

“My mom is going to crack up when she comes to see the show,” Mitrano said.

Edwards cast Emily Decker, of the DUMC family, in the role of Clara, but he hired Wesley Morgan, the tenor he needed to play Fabrizio.

So the stars are in alignment for “Light in the Piazza” this weekend in Dunwoody, said Mitrano, who was getting ready for a dress rehearsal when we spoke with her.

Her only problem: She had spent 30 minutes trying to secure a false eyelash. After so many years off the theater boards, she was hardly used to the intricacies of stage makeup.

“I’m giving up!” she joked, about trying to get that eyelash on.

 

“The Light in the Piazza” will be staged at 7pm Thursday, Friday and Saturday, and at 3pm Sunday at Dunwoody United Methodist Church, 1548 Mt. Vernon Road. All tickets: $15 at the door. www.dunwoodyumc.org, 770-394-0675, ext. 106.

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