The soaring textured voices of Kate Baldwin and Nicholas Rodriguez are enough to warrant a trip to New Hope to see the Bucks County Playhouse’s production of “The Bridges of Madison County.”
Add in the chemistry Baldwin and Rodriguez convey as unexpected and predictably doomed lovers, and you have a musical that transcends some excesses in staging and a Jason Robert Brown score with evocative melodies — but often banal lyrics. Consider it one more luminous feather in Bucks County Playhouse’s crowded cap.
“Bridge’s” story, devised by Robert James Waller for a best-selling novel, and told with depth by book writer Marsha Norman for the musical, is richly romantic enough to give any rendition of it a generous headstart in gaining audience interest.
Waller, Norman, and Brown tell about a World War II Italian war bride who married a G.I. and moved with him to Iowa where she’s become a farm wife, a mother, and part of a community where everybody knows everyone and everything about them.
Resigned to that life but sentimental for her native Naples and the cultural, culinary liveliness it provides, Francesca (Baldwin) looks forward most to three days when her family will be away and she can luxuriate in skipping chores and reading. As Francesca settles into her respite, a photographer comes to her door to ask directions to a bridge he wants to include in a spread he is doing for National Geographic.
Francesca rides with the photographer, Robert (Rodriguez), to guide him to the bridge he cannot find. The rest can be guessed, but even while the audience knows what is bound to happen, Baldwin and Rodriguez endow their characters with such vibrant life and, more, reveal the inner beings of Francesca and Robert so clearly and movingly, they make you eager to see their romance unfold. Through Baldwin and Rodriguez, you experience the joy of the unexpected, the anxiety of complication, and the moment when the inevitable occurs and love radiates from the Bucks County stage.
The lovers’ progress is less a roller coaster ride than a sweet passage in two people’s personal lives that is likely to be fleeting. The romance and its consummation are all the more poignant because they build and percolate in a slow, steady, fated fashion rather than rocketing by as a one-time happenstance that had its time and can end as quickly as it began.
Baldwin and Rodriguez make that happen, with the help and pacing of director Hunter Foster, so whatever else happens in “The Bridges of Madison County,” the ever-firming bond between Francesca and Robert, is there to rivet you to the story and its beautiful telling.
While Francesca and Robert’s affair remain the focal point, “Bridges” introduces you to the town where Francesca lives and the attendees – including Francesca’s family — at the State Fair (similar to the one Rodgers and Hammerstein write about in their musical).
The ancillary material isn’t as gripping as the central romance, but its gives Norman and Roberts an opportunity to provide extra tension as Francesca’s husband and children, telephone her, sometimes at inopportune times.
Rather than creating some form of relief from the intensity of Francesca and Robert’s passion, the scenes apart from Baldwin and Rodriguez seem an interruption, almost like a commercial in the middle of a Bogart film.
While Baldwin and Rodriguez find the right measure and instinctually build their ardor that deepens their relationship, the background material often seems corny and exaggerated.
Francesca’s children, Carolyn (Emily Pellecchia) and Michael (Thomas Cromer), don’t just carp at each other verbally but are constantly shoving or hitting one another in ways that are meant to convey various ways siblings irritate each other. But it plays as being overdone.
The townsfolk and fair attendees also seem directed to go too far. They’re always laughing and grinning and moving in ways that seem unnatural and become annoying. Hunter Foster has wisely trimmed any business that might overstate Francesca and Robert’s clearly apparent romance, but he turns the various Iowans into hicks who seem to have no basis in reality.
There are times when all the wriggling and jiving calms down, such as when Francesca’s town is giving support to a woman whose husband lost his arm in a farming accident. For most of Foster’s production, the overdone business is there to mar group scenes. A musical number done by a troupe at the State Fair is a perfect example of the show surrendering the careful poise of the romance to utter chaos with choreography that looks as if it was made up, ineptly, on the spot.
Scenes away from Francesca and Robert are better when they’re more focused on a dramatic point rather than a musical diversion. Francesca’s husband, Bud (Bart Shatto) never succumbs to the silliness others do and keeps the idea that Francesca is married, and Bud is content, in the audience’s head. A conversation between married neighbors, Marge (Nikki Yarnell) and Charlie (Mark Megill) provide a solid scene that gives Baldwin and Rodriguez time offstage to rest.
One sequence that totally misses its mark is a busy passage meant to show the Iowa scenery Francesca and Robert see as they drive to the bridge Robert couldn’t find. Foster enlists the entire cast to move fences and roll in trees. It’s clear what they’re doing, but the constant action diverts too much from the lead characters and becomes more of a nuisance than a success.
All criticisms cease when Kate Baldwin and Nicholas Rodriguez are on stage.
Baldwin could earn a Tony for her intelligently nuanced yet passionate performance as Francesca.
Unlike the large motions Foster imposes on the supporting cast, Baldwin displays more than a dozen small moments that are subtle but clear and enhance Francesca’s emotions and reactions to an attraction she never imagined.
Then there is her voice. Brown writes his best material for Francesca and Robert, but whether his lyrics find poetry or are a dreary recitation of a typical day, Baldwin makes them special. Her soprano is one of the fullest and truest of any in today’s theater. It’s a treat to hear and savor it.
Rodriguez, and Foster, help Robert by not having him be the “hippie” the Iowa neighbors say he is. Rodriguez is more like a McGyver, an able, natural man who wins by his straightforwardness, simplicity of dress, and ability to be adept in any situation.
It is this competent, Everyman quality that appeals. You also see Rodriguez’s Robert adoring Baldwin’s Francesca with a love that is open and ingenuous as the character is.
Like Baldwin, Rodriguez has a resonant, expressive voice that gives texture and emotional heft to all of his numbers. His duets with Baldwin are just plain splendid. Make that extraordinarily splendid.
Bart Shatto was wonderful and moving on his own as the confused Bud. He embodied the Iowa farmer and beset father while never being corny. Like Rodriguez, Shatto brought a lot of texture to his part. Slapping and nudging each other aside, Emily Pellecchia and Thomas Cromer did a fine job as Francesca and Bud’s children.
Anna Louizos’ set was a handsome collection of frames that could represent a home or specific place with clarity. Lauren T. Roark’s costumes were perfect whether stylish for Francesca or fun for the fairgoers.
The Bridges of Madison County, Bucks County Playhouse, 70 South Main Street, New Hope, Pennsylvania. Through Sunday, September 10. $32 to $70. 215-862-2121 or www.bcptheater.org.
