In a studio in the center of New York City, rehearsing for an encore! Two young lovers meet for the first time in 1950s Italy.
“This is my mother, Margaret Johnson,” said Clara, a suddenly enthralled American tourist, to Fabrizio, an Italian local.
Fabrizio repeated “Johnson” and associated the name with a popular Hollywood star of the time. “Van Johnson?!”
“Yes!” Clara excited.
“Are you—a relative?” Fabrizio asked.
“No, no,” interrupted Mother Margaret.
And so did director Chai Yu. He turned to Lucy Ann Miles, the Tony Award-winning actress who played Margaret, with a note.
“Van Johnson is white,“ Yu said, gesticulating his Asian face.
The group nodded. They start the scene again, and when Miles says the line, she says, “no‘, putting her fingers around her Asian face, demonstrating the contrast to the lovestruck Fabrizio.
The onlookers burst into laughter at this move.
Nothing in the script, music or lyrics of this Tony Award-winning 2005 Broadway musical has changed in the revival, which opens with a short run on Wednesday. However, with the casting of an Asian-American actress in her two major roles, the musical emphasizes its exploration of heterogeneity—the heterogeneity that some Asian Americans often feel in places such as the United States. So the framework of the musical was remade. Without revision, that point of view would have to be reflected in Yu’s direction and interpretation of the actors.
When Miles (“The King and I”) agreed to play Margaret, Yu began thinking about further exploring the experience of feeling like an outsider, focusing on her background as a Korean-American. I was. The surge in anti-Asian violence during the pandemic is still very much in front of us, Yu said.
“No matter how Asian-American you are, you will always remain a foreigner. It makes you feel,” Yu said.
“So I was interested in what it really meant to explore the outsider’s position in this particular musical.” Playwright and director of shows such as Cambodian Rock Band Mr. Yu also added. “In fact, it helps open up the music a little more. I think great works of art have a way of finding more life force between the sentences and the scenes.”
“The Light in the Piazza,” starring Victoria Clarke as Margaret and Kelly O’Hara as Clara, follows a woman and her daughter on vacation in Italy. Love is at the center. Clara (Anna Zabelson) falls in love with Fabrizio (James D. Gish). Margaret wants to end her relationship in order to protect her daughter, who suffered a brain injury when she was young that left her in a childlike state as an adult. increase. And Margaret herself is also stuck in her seemingly loveless marriage to her husband in her North Carolina home.
Thanks to the Johnson family’s position as a tourist, a foreign outsider, Clara’s preoccupation with her disability fades, her love blossoms, Margaret’s perspective changes, and she is able to let go of her daughter. rice field. When leaving home, the two women find themselves in a way.
It can be difficult for Asian Americans to determine exactly what feels like home. Clint Ramos designed the set with Miguel Urbino and was part of the encore. The leadership team recalled watching the show ten times during its first airing. He moved to New York from the Philippines and the idea of immersing himself in a new place and loving it resonated with him. “I cried ugly every time,” he said of watching the musical.
The top of the encore was Miles! List of Margaret roles. (Ben Brantley, in a 2005 review of the show, wrote that the character “would be a blessing to those looking for signs of intelligent life in American musicals.”) I was virtuosic enough to handle it, but I felt. He’s also a very good actor,” Ramos said.
To play the role, Yu and Miles studied the history of Korean immigration, and Miles’ Margaret came to the United States in the early 1900s to study art and English before meeting her white husband and settling in the United States. I guessed not. South, and eventually gave birth to a child.
Miles, who juggles the show with her role as a beggar in the Tony-nominated Broadway revival of Sweeney Todd, was born in the United States, spent some of her childhood in South Korea, and then returned to Korea. to America with her mother. She studied English when she was growing up in Hawaii, but her Korean skills have declined, her mother’s stubborn accent, and the fact that she wears nice clothes, unlike her friends’ parents. She recalled being irritated by the indifference about Over time, she said, she even developed a kind of resentment towards her mother.
“So when I make Margaret, I carry all these stories and ideas with me,” she said.
Zabelson, who graduated from high school last year and is making her professional New York debut in the musical, said she’d always wanted to sing the song but had never seen someone who looked like her play the role of Clara. rice field. Zabelson said she identified herself as Japanese American and Jewish.
“I never imagined I could sing that role,” said Zabelson, who has traditionally played the role of a white actress. “I think when all the kids grow up, they’ll think, ‘Wouldn’t it be fun to do this?'” When I started, I think a lot of me thought, ‘Oh, let’s not take that role. “
“But seeing Lucy obsess over it sparked something in me,” she continued. “I am from Texas, and Margaret and Clara are from North Carolina. is not.”
And despite the effects of her injury, Clara is generally a cheerful and optimistic young woman who has been warmly received by Fabrizio’s family, Zabelson said.
So while the actors were still exploring their characters during last week’s rehearsals, much of the racially conscious nuance layered into the performance comes through Margaret and the mother-daughter interaction between Clara and Margaret. Not so, said Mr. Zabelson.How much power does Margaret have? An internalized fear of racism makes them more reluctant to accept What about Fabrizio and his family? How did her experience as an immigrant make her stronger, and how does that toughness translate into Margaret and Clara’s interactions?
How to incorporate a sense of racial heterogeneity into the show was an ongoing challenge for the cast as well.
“Maybe it’s a gesture, a look, a mild form of racism from other people in Italy,” Miles said.
Miles had also seen “The Light in the Piazza” on Broadway and said he immediately recognized “overwhelming orchestration, beautiful vocals and a truly human story of love, sorrow and regret”.
But in the years since, playing the music, it spoke to her in a different way.
She said it’s no secret that she and her husband, Jonathan Blumenstein, have experienced tragedy. In 2018, Miles’ daughter Abigail, 5, was killed while she was walking down Park Slope in Brooklyn, and Miles himself was seriously injured after being hit by her car. She said Miles was pregnant at the time, but she lost her baby two months later, near her due date.
“You can really see Margaret trying to be strong and letting people know that she’s in control and everything will be okay,” Miles said. “But what happens when the door closes?”
When Margaret finally allows herself to be vulnerable to an audience, it could be a way for her personally to “finally take a breather and maybe show a little more of who I am,” she continued. .
“I hope it’s not by the end of the show,” she added. “Because it doesn’t heal”
