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Piazza, Delivered: Tony-Winning Guettel-Lucas Musical Will Tour
By Kenneth Jones
14 Feb 2006
The Tony Award-winning musical The Light in the Piazza will embark on a 50-week North American tour in the 2006-07 season, NETworks announced.
Starting in August, more than 25 cities will see the Equity touring version of Lincoln Center Theater's production of the romantic musical about an American mother and daughter on vacation in 1953 Italy.
Drawn from the novella by Elizabeth Spencer, the lushly romantic musical was written by composer-lyricist Adam Guettel (Floyd Collins) and librettist Craig Lucas (Reckless, Prelude to a Kiss).
When her innocent daughter, Clara, falls in love with a Florentine boy named Fabrizio, a North Carolina mother, Margaret, struggles with the ideas of protecting her daughter — and allowing her to experience the world.
No casting has been announced for the tour. Victoria Clark won the 2005 Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical for playing the watchful mother who holds a secret about her daughter's past.
Among cities that will see the Light are Seattle, Denver, Orlando, Miami, Raleigh (NC), Hershey (PA), Portland, Costa Mesa, Tempe (AZ) and Sacramento. A complete tour schedule will be announced shortly. The new musical opened on Broadway April 2005 at Lincoln Center Theater's Vivian Beaumont, and several extensions followed (tickets are on sale through July 2006).
NETworks will reunite the Lincoln Center Theater creative team — director Bartlett Sher, scenic designer Michael Yeargan (who won a 2005 Tony for his expansive vision of Florence and Rome), costume designer Catherine Zuber (who won a 2005 Tony for her circa 1953 costumes, showing American and Italian fashion), lighting designer Christopher Akerlind (who won a 2005 Tony for bathing the show's public squares and statues in streams of sunshine) and sound designer ACME Sound Partners.
Orchestrations are by Ted Sperling, Adam Guettel and Bruce Coughlin (they won 2005 Tonys for their orchestrations). Music direction is by Ted Sperling and musical staging is by Jonathan Butterell.
In a statement, composer-lyricist Guettel, who won the 2005 Tony for Best Score, said of the show, "With The Light in the Piazza, I tried to write music that would sound like the experience of falling in love, to evoke the feeling of it, or memory, or wish. After all, there's a piazza in every American city and I hope that our show brings something genuinely romantic."
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The Light in the Piazza won six 2005 Tony Awards, five Drama Desk Awards and two Outer Critics Circle Awards for its acclaimed New York run.
NETworks has produced national tours of Ragtime, Seussical, Little Women and more. The company has produced Equity and non-Equity productions.
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