Yawning language gaps are bridged in the usual musical-theater way, with a pair of charming duets, “Passeggiata,” a playful walk through town together, and one of Guettel’s most urgently passionate songs, “Say It Somehow,” to close the first act.Ĭomplications ensue in the second act as we learn the tragic basis of Margaret’s misgivings about her daughter’s impending nuptials - a run in with a Shetland pony (I kid you not), that has permanently impacted the girl’s mental capacities. At first sight, it’s at least deep infatuation, which in stories such as these, might as well be love, because within a few scenes and no more than two dozen broken-English sentences between them, Clara and Fabrizio are talking marriage. The wind lifts Clara’s hat and lands it in the hands of handsome Fabrizio Naccarelli (Rob Houchen). The prominent swelling strings characterize movie music of the period, but Guettel ballasts his composition with dissonant, modernist undercurrents in a way that elevates the form.
“Statues and Stories” is a utile curtain-raiser, introducing exotic Florence through the eyes of the two women, conjuring courtships past and future.
Of course, only a tourist could see it that way, and that’s exactly what Margaret (Fleming) and Clara (Dove Cameron) are. Sexy, stylish, modern yet steeped in Old World charm, Italy plays its postcard self as an idyllic Roman and Florentine backdrop reminiscent of the Audrey Hepburn-Gregory Peck 1953 classic Roman Holiday, or Fellini’s La Dolce Vita (1960).
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