Magic of Michelangelo lies in its music
01:00 AM EDT on Friday, April 27, 2007
By Channing Gray

Journal Arts Writer

Michelangelo, Rhode Island composer Enrico Garzilli's coming-of-age musical about art's great hero, comes to the Providence Performing Arts Center tonight and tomorrow. But based on last night's dress rehearsal Garzilli has a hit on his hands.

Just don't go expecting a big Broadway-style show with elaborate sets and lavish costumes. This is a production from Opera Providence, which has been struggling to get back on its financial feet. And for them to have even staged something in a hall so grand and expensive as PPAC is quite a coup.

So the sets are a little stark, towering scaffolding that serves as a pulpit for the fanatical Savonarola, and to lift Michelangelo up to the Sistine ceiling. Two screens flanking the stage flash examples of the artist's painting and sculpture.

As for the plot, there are no unexpected twists, just a pretty straightforward telling of the artist's younger years, his battles with his father, his time in the Medici palace and work on some of his most famous creations.
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Otherwise the magic of Michelangelo, seen in its world premiere, lies in Garzilli's gorgeous music, in his natural gift for spinning out soaring tunes and lighting up the stage. When Michelangelo yearns to be an artist, not the banker his father wants, his muse appears in the form of soprano Jane Shivick to sing perhaps the finest song of the show, the touching "Deep in Your Heart."

But there are a handful of other songs that stand out, such as the lovely "Pie Jesu" Shivick sings in the second act, and Michelangelo's dramatic "Conquer the Night," when he is attacked by doubts and demons.

The musical opens with the aged Michelangelo near death. His close friend Tommaso Cavalieri tells his story in a flashback. Michelangelo roams the hills outside his home in Florence, discovering faces in the rocks that dot the landscape. He wants desperately to become an artist but his father, Frank Ward, sings it's better to "Become a Banker," and parades before him all the lowly jobs he might end up with if he doesn't aspire to a life of commerce.

But when he is apprenticed to a sculptor's studio, he is taunted by jealous fellow students, who at one point beat him. He ends up being taken under the wing of Lorenzo de Medici and falls in love with his daughter Contessina, who is promised to someone else.

When at 22 he sculpts the Pieta we hear Shivick sing the "Pie Jesu," as two actors pose freeze-frame in the shape of the famed statute. We also see him sketching the model for his colossal David, but there are no blocks of stone on the stage, no sculptor's studio. That is all left to the imagination, like so much in this production.

The most dramatic moments come with the rise of Savonarola, who preaches that art is decadent, and has books and paintings burned in the streets. Slides of fire are shown on the screens and some inventive lighting suggests flames licking the scrim that conceals the orchestra from the rest of the action.

In an interesting move, two-dozen members of the Rhode Island Philharmonic are laced mid-stage behind the cast of singers and in front of a chorus that sings a jazzy Alleluia.

As for the cast, a booming Anton Belov, donning a black robe, is terrific as the evil Savonarola, sounding like the kind of commanding, charismatic figure that can whip up a crowd. And Kara Lund makes a sweet Contessina.

But it is Jason McStoots' warm unforced tenor that stands out as the adult Michelangelo. McStoots is a natural, a believable actor and a first-rate singer.

Michelangelo takes place tonight and tomorrow night at 8 at the Providence Performing Arts Center on Weybosset Street.

cgray@projo.com

Scott and Zelda
Cornerstone Playhouse hosts the Fitzgeralds
By BILL RODRIGUEZ, The Phoenix
August 14, 2007 4:02:57 PM

Celebrity bad behavior certainly didn't start with rock bands trashing hotel rooms in the '60s. Novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald and his flamboyant wife Zelda hardly gave alcoholism a good name in the '20s and '30s. The musical The Smart Set, with a book, music, and lyrics by Enrico Garzilli, conveys that with animated energy and some captivating songs in the current Cornerstone Playhouse production (through August 19), in Wakefield.

Directed by David Dilullo, the cast consists mostly of freshmen and sophomore college students, so some of the acting is stagy, reminding us that seasoned adults are being played by teenagers. But the singing voices are all satisfying, and two or three are quite good.

The action takes place on the French Riviera in 1925 and Baltimore in the 1930s. In the earlier year, Scott (Christopher Dieman) has just written The Great Gatsby, which received remarkable critical acclaim — almost as remarkable as its commercial failure, in contrast to the popular success five years before of This Side of Paradise. Full of self-doubt and accompanying self-loathing, he is now fitfully working on Tender Is the Night.

In this portrayal, Zelda (Lara Maynard) is given credit for being a positive influence on Scott's writing, especially for her helpful critiques of Gatsby. She may have been a spoiled Alabama socialite, but she did see her own autobiographical novel, Save Me the Waltz, published in 1932. Less controversial an influence is Ernest Hemingway (W. Matthew LeClair), who more than once put himself on record that he thought Scott was prostituting his talent in writing short stories for popular magazines and that Zelda was jealous of his writing skill.

But this musical is also about the trust fund patrons Gerald and Sara Murphy (Benjamin Grills and Theresa Masse). They not only gave lavish parties for their literary and artist friends but, by this account, supported Scott by paying for the Fitzgeralds' Riviera villa and nanny, among other things. Hemingway jokes to them that he hates to see a married couple so happy: "It's unnatural." Indeed, both the couple and the actors playing them are the most appealing people in this tale, our surrogate eyes on the madness of the self-destructive writers depicted. The song "Children" that they sing provides insight into their forgiving behavior as they implicitly compare their own children to their immature friends.

Of course, we see Scott and Zelda fighting a lot, but an illuminating device Garzilli uses to convey Zelda's inner state some of these times is to have her dancing defiantly about him, like a furious Isadora Duncan. This account of their lives centers around an affair she is known to have had with a French aviator, Edouard (Jack Stupinski). Here he is depicted as falling in love with her, and as Scott and Edouard sincerely beg for her affection in "Fly Away with Me Tonight," Dieman and Stupinski finally relax into some natural and affecting acting.

The women in this production are the best actors, with Masse consistently capturing a fascinating Sara and Maynard usually rising to the occasion as Zelda. Together they hit the mark pointedly with "Don't Run Away." Jo-Anna Colangelo as seductive flapper singer Josephine takes this musical to the level it should rise to in the set piece "What's a Girl to Wear?"

As a story, the musical peters out, however. After Zelda collapsed into a nervous breakdown in 1930, she was diagnosed as schizophrenic and soon confined to a mental hospital where she eventually died. But this show's account doesn't complicate the tale by making her so unstable, so it just trails off with her unaccountably disappearing.

Costume design by Elsie Collins is quite convincing for the period, especially with Josephine's stunning flapper dress. Choreography is by Olga Timokhin. For this scaled-down production of keyboards, bass, and percussion, musical direction is by Jay Treloar and Philip Martorella.

The Cornerstone Playhouse is a new, 50-seat black box theater adjacent to the True Brew Café. Posts here and there interrupt sightlines, and not all seats are on risers. This is their third production.

Rhode-Island-based Garzilli first had The Smart Set workshopped in New York in 1993. It was revived there 10 years later and more recently was performed in Burrillville. Garzilli has also written the musicals Michelangelo, which was performed earlier this year at the Providence Performing Arts Center, and Rage of the Heart, which he is revising for a Broadway production.

Cornerstone Playhouse mounts The Smart Set
01:00 AM EDT on Thursday, August 9, 2007
By Channing Gray

Journal Arts Writer

After 30 years of selling surgical devices for Johnson & Johnson, Peg Fradette took an early retirement and bought a struggling café in an old sawmill just off Main Street in Wakefield. The True Brew Café has been open now for about 2-1/2 years, servings sandwiches and salads and offering night-time entertainment.

Then a year ago, Fradette took over an adjoining room and converted it into a theater, raising money to renovate the space from barbecues and benefit concerts in which rockers and opera singers alike donated their talents. One patron, noticing the motley assortment of fold-up chairs — some borrowed from the neighboring karate studio — wrote a check to buy new seats.

Fradette called on contacts at the University of Rhode Island and said, " 'Call me crazy, but do you see a black box theater here?' and they gave me thumbs up." The ceiling might be a little low, they told her, but it could be done.

So far, Fradette has mounted two productions there — Dancing at Lughnasa and You're a Good Man Charlie Brown — with the help of David DiLullo, Prout High School's theater director. Tonight her Cornerstone Playhouse, located just across from the old post office on Robinson Street, will stage a jazz-age musical by Enrico Garzilli, whose musical about the life and times of Michelangelo took center stage not long ago at the Providence Performing Arts Center.

Garzilli, a former priest who lives in South Kingstown, wrote The Smart Set in 1990 at the urging of a New York City woman who put on a concert version of his Rage of the Heart in her Washington Square apartment. She asked Garzilli if he would write a musical about her friends. And who might they be? Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald.

The woman, Josephine White, was full of stories, which Garzilli wove into the musical, which is basically about an affair Zelda had with a French aviator while F. Scott was busy toiling away on Tender is the Night. The show had a successful run at the 13th Street Theater in New York soon after it was written, and was revived there in 2003.

Fradette came to know Garzilli through a couple of singers who had performed at her bistro, where she offers programs of jazz, opera and swing, along with tenderloin and glazed carrots. Garzilli caught Cornerstone's Dancing at Lughnasa back in March and they struck up a friendship. Talks began with Michelangelo producer Tom Farrell over doing The Smart Set.

Fradette recalls the night Garzilli showed up and read his way through The Smart Set, often jumping up and going to the piano to play songs.

"He wanted to see if we wanted to produce it and I was sucked in from the start," said Fradette. "The music is gorgeous and memorable. I think he has something special here."

The show is being presented in a scaled-down version, said Garzilli. More people were on the stage for Michelangelo than can fit in the Wakefield theater, he said. In some cases, the audience is just inches away from the young cast. The band, which usually consists of a dozen musicians, has been pared down to a keyboard, piano, bass and percussion.

"It's a very intimate production," said Garzilli, "with extremely enthusiastic and talented young people. They are working very hard."

DiLullo went with mostly college-age actors, and one recent Prout graduate, Christopher Dieman, who will be playing Fitzgerald. Dieman, a talented pianist, will be attending New York University's Tisch School of the Arts in the fall, where he'll be majoring in theater.

Zelda will be played by Lara Maynard, a URI junior.

"Lara is rock solid," said Fradette. "There can be 30 people on stage and you'll be drawn to her."

Fradette said she hopes to model her enterprise on Warren's successful 2nd Story Theater, where you can catch dinner downstairs before the play. She'll be serving a tenderloin, and salmon with cucumber and dill sauce, before the shows. The café is bring-your-own-booze, and reservations are suggested.

If there's time, diners often take a stroll along the nearby bike path before the play, said Fradette.

"It's a little chancy for us," she said of the production. "We're a little small. But I have high confidence in David DiLullo. If anyone can do it, it's David."

The Smart Set runs through Aug. 19, although several nights are already sold out. Tickets are $25, $20 for students and seniors, and $15 for children under 12. Reservations can be made at the True Brew Café or by calling (401) 783-8827.

Cornerstone jazzes up the joint
By Doug Norris/Arts & Living Editor
Independent and North East Independent
August 16, 2007

Theresa Masse of East Greenwich (at left) plays Sara Murphy and Lara Maynard of West Warwick is Zelda Fitzgerald in "The Smart Set," an original musical by Enrico Garzilli set during the age of "The Great Gatsby." The play, directed by David DiLullo, is being performed at Cornerstone Playhouse in Wakefield.

WAKEFIELD - Green Hill's Enrico Garzilli explores the passions of F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald and their Jazz Age friends in "The Smart Set," an original musical play that puts a microscope to the famed American writers working and playing in France after the Great War.

In this alluring production at Cornerstone Playhouse, director David DiLullo once again wrings impassioned performances from a young cast - too young, actually, to realistically portray the gravitas and darkness that Garzilli discovers beneath lives that on the surface seem as giddy as champagne bubbles. But it's not the actors' fault that they're not older, and for the most part they manage to overcome that handicap with energetic and engaging performances across the board.

The play begins with the entire adult cast on stage doing "The Smart Set," a bouncy, bubbly opening number, with jitterbug and Charleston moves on a simple but effective stage of stark, art deco black and white design. (The poles in Cornerstone's space remain a persistent problem, especially if you're sitting behind one, but the production uses them whenever possible to good effect.)

The show's signature tune offers that memorable combination of simple lyric, infectious beat and catchy melody that characterizes show-stoppers in those golden musicals of yore, and it could be a hit if the play continues to evolve. Garzilli obviously knows a good thing when he composes it, and the tune is reprised at the beginning of the second act and closes the musical on a high note.

The play is framed by a prologue and epilogue set in Baltimore during the 1930s, after the highs of the hedonistic young artists and America's most decadent decade have turned into the grim reality of the consequences of excess and the Great Depression. In between, we see the Fitzgeralds and their friends, including Ernest Hemingway, who comes off as a kind of eternal college sophomore rather than the ambitious but insecure writer who overcompensates with machismo and by living larger than life.

These people liked to party, and Garzilli starts there, with the gang hanging out at the French Riviera, drowning in booze, soaking up sun, flirting with one another and strangers, playing games of leisure and, underneath it all, worrying about their talents and self-worth. Fitzgerald (Christopher Deiman) has published "The Great Gatsby" to critical acclaim, but not commercial success, and he's turned to the bottle to submerge his fears about diminishing finances and being a one-book wonder, leading to alcohol-fueled anger, bad behavior, regular hangovers and a serious case of writer's block.

His wife, Zelda (Lara Maynard), trumps her husband as the play's most interesting character. She's a frustrated writer who is in love with Scott but is jealous of his success - particularly since she was the creative driving force behind "Gatsby." She's also suspicious of his relationship with Hemingway (W. Matthew LeClaire), whose misogynistic views and pugilistic tendencies create more conflict.

Garzilli manages the neat trick of balancing the tensions, giving us a glimpse of the good life and why these people would succumb to it, while chronicling the inevitable decline and decay in lives and relationships. There are powerful scenes, both acted and sung, revealing Zelda's complicated mix of love and rage and Scott's persistent demons. Humorous scenes, especially a cabaret dance act by the famed French seductress Josephine (played with vamp and vigor by Jo-Anna Colangelo) help keep the story from wallowing. Grounded characters such as Gerald and Sara Murphy (Benjamin Grills and Theresa Masse) and French aviator Garzilli's compositions are deceptively simple, at times reminiscent of Cole Porter in their phrasing and often saturated with lush harmonies. The cast performs them admirably, but it would be interesting to hear what great singers could do with this material. "Fly Away with Me Tonight" is a stand-out, a beautifully composed piece with three singers introducing their voices at different times in different harmonies to stirring effect. Garzilli also turns a clever lyric, especially in the decadent details of Roaring 20s life ("The cat is licking vodka that's been poured in someone's shoe...").

The real revelation here is the playwright's dialogue, which is alternately poignant and sharply funny. When Zelda tells Scott Fitzgerald that "Gatsby" was praised by H.L. Mencken, he replies: "Good God! If Mencken liked it, no normal human being is going to like it!" Hemingway at one point is quoted as saying, "In war our enemy is a definition; in life our enemy is a discovery." And Sara Murphy in a tart double-entendre to Zelda, says: "No man is as big as his fiction."

The play is filled with such bon mots. Props conveying leisure, from golf clubs to tennis racquets, croquet mallets to beach balls, help set the mood along with a bar that never seems out of reach. Colorful costuming exudes Jazz Age fashion - from the flapper dresses and feather boas on the women to the bathing suits and tuxedoes on the men. In all, "The Smart Set" is an entertaining look at American idols in the age of the golden calf.

Cornerstone troupe gets 'Smart' in Wakefield
By Mard Morin

"You need some reality, some conflict," pronounces Ernest Hemingway to his good friends Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Yet, based on Enrico Garzilli's latest musical, The Smart Set, the couple's lives are already filled with plenty of conflict.

The musical, which began a two-week run at Wakefield's intimate Cornerstone Playhouse tucked away in the rear of the True Brew Café, was originally written in 1990 at the urging of a New York City woman who was friends with the Fitzgeralds. With pen and pad in hand, Garzilli listened as she told stories of the couple culminating in the musical depicting an affair between Zelda and a French aviator while F. Scott was working on Tender is the Night. Most of the action occurs on the French Riviera with the Fitzgeralds vacationing with Hemingway, good friends Sara and Gerald Murphy and the ever present "flying Dutchman" Edouard.

Garzilli, a RI native, is an internationally known writer and composer with recordings produced by Virgin, First Night and EMI Records. He is also a published author and holds a doctorate from Brown. He has studied and taught in London and Rome returning to the US to teach writing and literature at Providence College and Shakespeare and Classical Drama at URI

This past year, he captivated audiences with the critically acclaimed Michelangelo at PPAC.

In 1995, he staged the World Premiere of his musical Rage of the Heart at Veterans' Memorial Auditorium; international producer Fritz Kurz is currently preparing Rage for Broadway. Just the music alone makes any Garzilli production stunning, ranging from a soothing, ethereal beauty to bold, gut-wrenching power.

The Smart Set nicely captures the well documented drinking and social habits of two of Americas most revered writers and those closest to them. Gertrude Stein famously labeled them "the lost generation," Hemingway himself referred to their lives as "a moveable feast" traveling from party to party; a lifestyle that contributed to Zelda's eventual insanity.

While some of the musical numbers are playful and flirtatious, others delve into the anguish that consumed the Fitzgeralds and it is here where Garzilli's mastery shines, "What You're Doing to Us." and "Speaking in Whispers" are truly haunting leaving the audience in a stunned, momentary silence.

Though the Cornerstone players were certainly capable, with some noteworthy performances, it would be interesting to see The Smart Set in the hands of some more seasoned and experienced actors, which may ultimately happen if Garzilli is serious about taking it to NY. Also, some of the dance numbers could use some work. An impromptu pas de deux between Zelda and Edouard felt oddly out of context.

As F. Scott, Chris Dieman had many fine moments.

Though his singing voice was just OK, his stage presence and mannerisms were at times illuminating, nicely conveying the author's constant pain and anguish.

Lara Maynard (Zelda) nicely handled the role of the neglected wife torn between faithfulness to her husband and a desire for something more. Wearing a constant pained expression, Maynard's strong singing voice and classic beauty made her a joy to watch.

Other notables include a brief, but memorable!, appearance by Jo-Anna Colangelo as singer Josephine Baker who, as the evening's strongest singer, delighted all with a very sultry and interactive "What's a Girl to Wear?"

W. Matthew LeClair (Hemingway) also had several funny moments always emerging at just the right time with Hemingwayesque gems like "the world breaks everyone" and "like war É friendship is not won without loyalty."

The Smart Set, Cornerstone Playhouse (True Brew Café), 213 Robinson Street, Wakefield, RI(401) 783-8827. Runs Tues, Wed, Thurs & Fri at 7:30pm and Sat & Sun at 2 & 7:30pm thru Aug 19.