Review: The Baker's Wife, the Musical That Gave the World "Meadowlark"

Not many musicals have had as tortured a history as The Baker’s Wife. Composer Stephen Schwartz and book writer Joseph Stein spent six grueling months in 1976 trying to fix the show during an out-of-town tour, but it closed in DC. A London run staged by Trevor Nunn in 1989 helped Schwartz and Stein come closer to their vision, but it, too, shuttered quickly. Director Gordon Greenberg took the baton in the early 2000s, shepherding revisions from Goodspeed (2002) to Paper Mill (2005) to the York (2007) to the Menier (2024), and now to Classic Stage Company.

If you know The Baker’s Wife for any reason, it’s because it spawned the eternal audition/cabaret song “Meadowlark,” and Greenberg’s off-Broadway production, in which Jason Sherwood’s gorgeous set envelops Classic Stage’s East 13^th Street theater, is the rare chance to hear the song in context. It’s also the opportunity to discover (or rediscover) a true musical-theater rarity, one that’s not quite a forgotten gem, but it’s a sweet confection, nonetheless.

The Baker’s Wife is the story of how one woman’s infidelity transforms an entire French town for the better. Stein first introduces us to the villagers whose petty squabbles have consumed their lives: two sets of warring spouses (Judy Kuhn and Robert Cuccioli, and Sally Murphy and Manu Narayan), a meddling priest (Will Roland), the mayor (Nathan Lee Graham) and his harem, the town drunk (Kevin Del Aguila), and a know-it-all professor (Arnie Burton). The only thing they can all agree on is how much they miss their daily loaves—the town baker having recently died.

Fortunately, the new boulanger—the naïve Aimable Castagnet (Scott Bakula)—has just arrived, with his much younger wife, Geneviève (Ariana DeBose), in tow. Everyone is fascinated by this May-December romance, no one more than mayoral valet Dominique (Kevin William Paul), who is instantly smitten. He convinces Geneviève to run away with him, sending Aimable into a spiral where he stops baking completely. As for the townspeople? Well, nothing brings this group of clashing personalities together better than the desire to get their bread back.

Stein (who died in 2010 at the of 98) and Schwartz spent the decades following the show’s initial failure focusing the material more and more on the townsfolk. In doing so, they’ve created a rollicking portrait of recognizable people with complicated problems, played here by a rogue’s gallery of musical-theater’s finest contemporary actors. The ostensible center of the ensemble is Kuhn’s formidable Denise, who trades insults with her good-for-little husband, Claude (Cuccioli), like a seasoned pro. Del Aguila (as the blotto Antoine) has never met a piece of scenery he couldn’t devour. Murphy is especially compelling as Hortense, whose mostly silent, peripheral arc involves finding the strength to leave her abusive spouse (Narayan) for good. She expresses so much pain on her face without much dialogue at all, how she does it is stunning.

But, of course, the show is called The Baker’s Wife, and the current iteration of the material, much like various older versions of the show, forgets that. Once Geneviève and Dominique leave at the end of Act 1, she’s gone until the end of Act 2. Greenberg and choreographer Stephanie Klemons mitigate this a bit with a brief dream ballet where Aimable imagines his wife entwined with her lover, but it doesn’t convey nearly as much as a scene or number would. The lusty song for this moment, “Endless Delight,” was cut 20 years ago, and our critic said the exact same thing about Greenberg’s Paper Mill staging in 2005.

Complicating matters is the lack of spark between DeBose and her suitor. Paul doesn’t embody the allure she envisions in “Meadowlark,” and she’s even kind of icy at her most jovial, making their tumble into bed no more convincing than her marriage to Aimable. Still, DeBose finds nuance in “Meadowlark” itself—if you’ve only ever heard it sung at 54 Below, you’ll grasp its meaning with greater depth here.

Bakula is a pitch perfect Aimable, a gentle silver fox whose kindness and easygoing charm wins us over instantly. The real takeaway of The Baker’s Wife is that, after Quantum Leap whisked him away to a prosperous Hollywood career, having him back-ula in the New York theater world is something to be treasured.

Greenberg’s staging is undeniably sumptuous, with Catherine Zuber’s splendid costumes and Bradley King’s shimmering lighting setting a rich visual tone. David Cullen’s lively orchestrations provide more specificity than Schwartz’s modest score might suggest, and the singing is uniformly strong. Yet this generally minor story doesn’t need two-a-half-hours to unfold, and it begins to overstay its welcome. Still, if the guiding question for any Baker’s Wife production is, “Does this show work?”, the ultimate answer here is: “Well enough.” At this stage in the show’s life, that’s practically a rave.