If you loved Robert James Waller’s 1992 book and got teary through the Meryl Streep/Clint Eastwood 1995 movie of “The Bridges of Madison County,” nothing brings a story home as watching it live onstage. This version is utterly and unabashedly romantic. Especially when bathed in Jason Robert Brown’s lush score and sensitively directed by Bartlett Sher.
The story is as old as literature and as new as spring. Thanks to Marsha Norman (‘night, Mother) there is a more substantive back story to our heroine, Francesca (Kelli O’Hara in a dark wig and subtle Italian accent), an Italian war bride plucked from the turmoil of post WWII Italy. She was a young idealistic girl betrothed to a shy suitor, envisioning a quiet, traditional life in the country, when he was killed in the war. Faced with poverty, her sister urges Francesca to sell herself, as she willingly does, to survive. Frightened and lost, Francesca finds her solution fleeing the turmoil of Naples with a stable Army officer, Bud (Hunter Foster in an underwritten role), to the bland, quiet and flatness of Winterset, Iowa, in the Midwest. This is where we find her, dutifully conformed, the busy mother of two noisy, very American teenagers Carolyn (Caitlin Kinnunen) and Michael (Derek Klena) and a solid, if stolid, husband/farmer in the middle of nowhere, er, Iowa.
One senses she does not have much time to spend dreaming of an alternate life, or indulging in “What ifs.” Her only company is nosy but well-meaning neighbors, Marge (the wonderful Cass Morgan) and Charlie (Michael X. Martin) who eventually will be the ones to keep her grounded.
On a rare, fateful day, with her family unaccustomedly absent at a state fair, she welcomes the solitude and silence and a chance to “read seed catalogs.” The proverbial handsome stranger comes to town, Robert (Steven Pasquale), sent on a National Geographic assignment to photograph Madison County’s covered bridges. He asks directions – and we see the potential for a romantic fantasy before they do!
Robert’s back story is not as explicit. Tender, tentative morsels of revelation to her (and seemingly to himself) offered in romantically explorative interludes indicate that he is a loner, preferring a life of safe emotional stability through travel rather than the vulnerability of closeness. In fact, her offer of tea on a hot summer day is much more difficult for him to accept than for her to give.
Tea leads to dinner which eventually leads to overnight and a four-day rapturous, cataclysmic avalanche of emotions each did not foresee or plan.
At a pre-opening interview, O’Hara and Pasquale indicated their fear of Francesca being perceived as easy, and Robert as predatory. There is no evidence of that in the play as written and ever-so-convincingly performed. Though swift, pains are taken in the script, music and direction to indicate the overwhelming surprise and totality of Robert and Francesca’s coming together. And when he ultimately tells her, “This is why I’m here on this planet, at this time, Francesca. Not to travel or make pictures, but to love you,” it proves irresistible. The coupling of Steven Pasquale and Kelli O’Hara is pure theater magic. They recently performed together in the musical Far from Heaven which debuted at Playwrights Horizons last July while she was pregnant. (Kelli, who has occasionally been faulted for her lack of warmth, admits that having her babies has transformed her, thanks to still raging hormones, into an emotional level not before witnessed or ever felt.) And even though they are much younger than their screen counterparts (Pasquale is 38 to Eastwood’s 55), and the miracle of love that comes later in life is not as poignant here, loneliness, longing and lust really have no age constraints. Jason Robert Brown’s soaring score (his Parade won the 1999 Tony) delivers the compelling romanticism of the story as much as the script. He introduces Francesca with just a lonely cello musical strain, a theme which repeats through her troubled moments, adding exceptionally sensitive orchestrations (sound by Jon Weston; orchestrations by Mr. Brown; music coordinator, Michael Keller). There are love songs galore for the lovers. Soaring, searing ballads like “Falling Into You,” “Who We Are & Who We Want to Be,” “One Second and a Million Miles” and “When I’m Gone” reflect their newly awakening senses and the deepening of their emotions with lyrics like, “You and I have just one second / And a million miles to go.”
In her, you can hear both the exhilarating quest for liberation and the smothering despair of captivity. This score, more than any before, is written especially for O’Hara, playing both to her Broadway sensibilities and her trained classical-soprano background. And the amazing O’Hara takes us through textured layers from delicate fragility to deep passion. Pasquale, to his credit, keeps up with her with his appropriately rugged good looks, clear tenor and poetic persona. Other characters are also given plumb musical moments: Bud, sensing his wife’s distracted tone in a phone call from the fair, sings “Something From a Dream” revealing feelings he cannot quite express or even comprehend though deeply felt. And Robert’s former wife, Marian (Whitney Bashor) sings “Another Life” in a terrific time-warping scene, a folk-style ballad sung in a flashback of her failed marriage as Robert draws close to Francesca. Both are songs of heartbreak.
In glaring contrast, the requisite country songs, which indicate the specific time and place of the play, feel like add-ons terribly out of synch with the emotions we are witnessing between the oblivious lovers. But they take on a deliberate and necessary task.
Such is the pull of the love story that the insertion of Michael Yeargan’s abstract Rockwell-type sets, placed and removed by Our Town-type inhabitants (note there is no choreographer credited but rather “movement” by Danny Mefford) in costumes by Catherine Zuber, and as lighted by Donald Huber, are more an annoyance and an unwanted distraction. But that is their purpose. To frame the love story within the greater context, to lend a sense of the reality of the dire consequences of their love affair, to remind us that there is a community surrounding it on which it will impact just as the affair will impact on them, to pierce the splendid isolation with which the two surround themselves. And a reminder that that cloak of intimacy is but temporary, that our levitating heroine will eventually be brought back to earth. It is director Sher doing his job.
The family’s jarring return forces Francesca’s decision in a heartbreaking scene — a trip to town with them, a glimpse of him across the square, a subliminal, fantasized embrace and then a cold return to reality. It is nowhere as affecting as the rain-soaked finale of the movie but it delivers the message. The ensuing scenes, the ritualized staging of a wedding and a funeral are almost emotionally inconsequential in contrast. The audience’s heart is already broken along with Francesca’s and Robert’s, and we all must return to our day-to-day lives.
Note of warning: Insecure husbands and the hard-hearted need not attend!
