Review: An Unforgettable Ruthie Ann Miles Leads The Light in the Piazza at Encores!

It’s impossible to view the New York City Center Encores! production of The Light in the Piazza without the lens of the real-life tragedy involving its luminous leading lady, Ruthie Ann Miles. Adam Guettel and Craig Lucas’s 2005 musical is about a mother and daughter on holiday in Italy; the daughter, Clara, is psychologically stunted after a childhood accident that the mother, Margaret, wishes she could turn back time to prevent. And deep in the second act, when Margaret sings the lyric “So much wishing just to have one moment back” as she relives the events in her mind’s eye, the lines between character and performer blur to become something otherworldly — a mother working through her grief in real time as she plays a mother summoning the strength to move on from devastation.

Suffice it to say, the rest of Chay Yew’s production doesn’t rise to Miles’s level of emotional intensity. But how could it? Miles’s lived experiences of losing two children after they were all struck by a car in 2018 permeate every aspect of her brave performance, while the rest of the company — which includes the sensational college freshman Anna Zavelson as Clara — is just doing The Light in the Piazza. The voices and orchestra certainly do Guettel’s masterpiece of a score justice, even if the show itself is still kind of dull.

The Light in the Piazza is a story of loving and letting go. Margaret and her distant husband Roy (the gruff Michael Hayden in a small cameo) have been fiercely protective of Clara since her accident (she’s in her mid-twenties now, a plot machination not revealed ’til later). When Clara falls in love with the hunky Florentine Fabrizio Naccarelli (James D. Gish, a little wooden with a very hunky voice), Margaret, at first reluctant to let their whirlwind relationship blossom, eventually comes to realize that Clara deserves a shot at the happiness she never really had.

Lucas’s script — from the novella by Elizabeth Spencer — is as economical as it gets (the whole show clocks in at a fleet two hours and 15 minutes) but presents a set of challenges that the revival can’t really solve (to be fair, the original version couldn’t either). Whole swaths of text are in Italian sans translation (to the point that Fabrizio’s mother, brassily played by Andréa Burns, comically steps out of the story to tell us what’s going on. Margaret, a character who doesn’t really have anyone to talk to, uses the audience as a confidant a bit too often. And the childlike treatment of Clara doesn’t match her musical motifs, which are imbued with sexual maturity. To her credit, Zavelson — a star in the making — finds credible and believable ways of balancing both aspects, while her powerful soprano soars through the title number and “The Beauty Is.”

As typical, City Center does right by the score, with conductor Rob Berman presenting Guettel, Ted Sperling, and Bruce Coughlin’s lush and romantic orchestrations in all their wonderous glory. Megumi Katayama’s sound design is a tad tinny in spots but still allows us to hear every single pluck of the harp and the frictional discordance of the oboe. The sonic experience of hearing that score live is truly one of a kind, especially combined with the glorious vocal harmonies, and it is a real pleasure to live in this musical world again for the first time in 18 years.

But the real takeaway is Miles (on loan for the week from Sweeney Todd), who finds nuance within nuance, new layer upon new layer, in a role heretofore defined by her predecessor, Victoria Clark. So distinct was Clark’s work at Lincoln Center Theater that I can still hear her line readings in my head. Miles’s version is so vastly different. She’s smaller and dryer, wearier and more delicate. Her life has clearly informed every aspect of her portrayal, and I don’t think I will ever forget her reprise of “The Beauty Is,” where she became so overcome she could barely even get the words out.

Anything that etches itself in our collective theatrical memories is worth seeing, and there’s no doubt that we’ll be talking of this one for years to come. May it last forever.