Well, the Ticket King of Broadway did not disappoint. We had incredible seats for the Saturday show of The Light in the Piazza. The Vivian Beaumont at Lincoln Center is such an intimate theater anyway, but being so close and central really was the icing on the cake.

The sets are breathtaking and really did deserve the Tony win for Michael Yeargan. The costumes by Catherine Zuber were gorgeous too -- love the pumps!. Overall I'm glad I saw it. The whole production makes you fell you are in Florence in 1953, you really do feel the romance.

The cast is amazing. Such beautiful voices, such effortless, glorious sounds. Victoria Clark is great and did deserve the Tony. But the whole supporting cast is amazing. Kelly O'Hara as the daughter is wonderful. I heard that in the out of town tryout that Celia Keenan-Bolger (who was nominated for Spelling Bee) was the original daughter but was dropped before they came to New York because she didn't have the Broadway look! Pretty interesting that they were both nominated in the same category!

Matthew Morrison was a great lovesick passionate Italian puppy. Michael Berresse (who plays his brother) who I saw in Kiss Me Kate and who directed Title of Show in NYMF last year was great, although I would have liked to see him do more. And Mark Harelik who plays Fabrizio's father was superb. I recognized him from Will and Grace where he plays Jack's boss at the gay TV network!

The book was charming and a lot funnier than I expected, although it got a bit weighted down in the Second Act. There was one weird departure of tone that came when the mother of Fabrizio (played by Patti Cohenour) breaks the fourth wall and translates the Italian "because I thought you should know what was going on". It was comic schtick that belonged in a musical like Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, not The Light in the Piazza, and was totally unnecessary. Victoria Clark narrates the story, but that works because you feel like she is writing in a diary and it is done with a tone consistent with the whole production.

I can honestly say I didn't love the music. It felt like wallpaper without strong melody, almost like movie scoring. It wasn't unpleasant, but I didn't connect with the show at a visceral level and so I haven't any great desire to see it again. It's interesting that Adam Guettel's style is such a departure from his mother's style (Mary Rodgers wrote Once Upon a Mattress and The Mad Show) and his grandfather's style (Richard Rodgers who wrote (duh!) Sound of Music, The King and I, Oklahoma, and many other classics!)

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