Gorgeous vocals, rich in context and emotion as well as lithe, pitch-perfect sound, combine with palpable, believable romance and smooth storytelling to make Princeton Summer Theater’s production of “The Bridges of Madison County” an early highlight of the fledgling summer season.
Eliyana Abraham’s staging moves deftly between intense passages in which unexpected love takes root, buds, and blooms to burgeoning and mundane sequences that show the everyday give-and-take of Iowa farmwife. A conversation between strangers leads to unintended flirtation, intimacy, and passion in a way that makes the Summer Theater audience fall as much in love with the involved couple as they fall in love with each other. Scenes that offset this romance show the contrast between the special and the usual in a natural way that is never jarring.
Though the acting is at different levels, the tone of Abraham’s direction keeps “Bridges” in balance so that scenes that take place at a distant county fair, at a bar, or in a snoopy neighbor’s kitchen provide just the right quantity of relief from the love story that dominates Marsha Norman’s well-structured book and Jason Robert Brown’s evocative, revealing score.
Sudden eye-opening, perspective-changing, life-enhancing love, the stuff of fantasy becoming a vibrant reality is the subject of Robert James Waller’s 1992 novel and Norman and Brown’s 2014 musical. It is the encapsulation of an extraordinary moment in two people’s lives, one that may stay a moment because of the individual circumstances of those lives.
Of high importance among all that Abraham sensitively presents in her production is a lack of moral judgment about the characters or their affair. The romance involves a married woman whose family is away for a few days. Norman’s script and Brown’s songs show the crisis awakening, fulfilling love creates for her while never questioning her straying or putting an onus on any decision she may make about where this love might take her. Abraham skillfully follows suit and lets the outcome of the romance be moot compared to the passion of the romance itself.
This letting love take its course, tempered by the characters weighing maturity and responsibility from their point of view, adds to the drama of the musical and this excellent production of it.
Eliyana Abraham has an obvious affinity with Jason Robert Brown. Her 2024 production of his musical, “The Last Five Years,” elevated the status of Princeton Summer Theater by giving it a more professional sheen and a promise of the work that could be done there.
“The Bridges of Madison County” eclipses the achievement of “The Last Five Years” and now ranks as the best work I’ve seen at Summer Theater since I began reviewing there a decade or so ago.
Some of the same reasons — good material, tasteful direction, and sharp-eyed casting — contribute to these successes.
Casting is prime. Alison Silldorff’s program bio lists no credit that hints of her previously playing a leading role as complex as Francesca, who comes to Iowa from Italy in 1946 as a war bride and stoically embraces Midwestern farmlife, including skepticism about her native foods like homemade mozzarella, only to be reminded of what she left in Naples by the appearance at her door of a photographer (Robert, played by Cory Garcia, Jr.) whose world travels for National Geographic and satisfied artist bent charm her and fill her with shelved longings.
Alison Silldorff’s bio may mention nothing more than college appearances and the Princeton Glee Club, but her performance as Francesca is of Broadway-caliber.
First, there’s her voice, expressive as it is clear and in total control as Silldorff leaps seamlessly from chest voice to high notes with operatic ease.
Silldorff not only makes the most of Jason Robert Brown’s songs, some of which tell extended stories, several of which give Francesca the chance to reveal ambitions, emotions, regrets, and compensations, the best of which express her passion, she makes them into their own little plays, arias that find every nuance in both vocalization and characterization.
Silldorff is a magnificent singer who can also act. Her carriage as Francesca is natural. She shows the character’s continental side, including ideas and talents that have little use and earn little notice in Iowa, and her accepting side as an ordinary woman living an ordinary, and not so bad, life.
Silldorff makes you clearly understand the many facets of Francesca, even those she subdued or put aside to tend to the practical needs of running a farm and raising a family in a place that is, after 18 years, no longer foreign but not quite home.
Silldorff’s Francesca not only responds to Robert’s lovemaking but shows disappointment at her husband’s small, barely intimate gestures of affection, the difference, let’s say of a full-blown telling kiss vs. a perfunctory peck on the cheek or squeezing of a shoulder.
Silldorff’s performance is so complete, so knowing, and so moving, it makes me hope I someday read bios of her having played several major roles on stages throughout the country.
Romance needs a partner, and Silldorff has one in Cory Garcia, Jr., another whose resume boasts mostly college performances but who has the talent and matinee idol looks to go much further.
Vocally, Garcia matches Silldorff, his elegant, flexible baritone telling you everything you need to know about Robert Kincaid and his love for Francesca.
Robert is also romantically reawakened by this Italian woman living in remote Iowa, cooking marvelous food and making fine sketches of the bridges he’s photographing. Garcia lets you share Robert’s feelings.
Garcia and Silldorff have a stage chemistry that makes their discovering each other, coming together, and deep love real.
Garcia may not look like the ’60s hippie several characters denote him as being — he’s meticulously well-groomed, not even a hint of a neglected beard or a hair longer than a quarter inch — but he is someone who would make a woman take notice, even a woman like Francesca who falls in love with Robert’s sensitivity, independence, and breadth of thought more than looks, to which she never refers.
Garcia grows into the naturalness Silldorff seems to have innately. His acting would benefit from the ease and confidence of his singing, which is glorious.
As much as Silldorff, Garcia has command of his voice. His range and the seeming effortlessness with which he takes full advantage of it brings both grace and power to every song. Duets with Silldorff are particular treats.
Singing, the fact of having a tone and music to underscore it, seems to free Garcia. It gives his voice colors and his body a physical ease he needs to develop more in delivering dialogue. Once he has that in his repertoire, he has the makings of a leading man directors will cast and audiences will savor.
Francesca and Robert receive “Bridges’s” main focus, but there are ancillary plot lines about Francesca’s husband and teenage children showing cattle at an Indiana State Fair and a next-door neighbor who is both newsy and kind.
Zach Lee shows Buzz, the American soldier who brings Francesca to Iowa, to be a solid guy who keeps track of his business and children and who is fond of his wife but who is not demonstrative or exciting. Buzz is workaday and focused on his farm and family. He left romance in Italy, assuming he had it there. In Lee’s hands, he comes across as responsible if a bit hard on his son, who has teenage things and secret ambitions on his mind.
Lee also has a versatile, expressive singing voice.
Lucy Grunden fits into Silldorff’s natural mode as Francesca and Buzz’s daughter. Lana Gaige is all rambunctious clumsiness as their son. Grunden and Gaige add to the lovely harmonies Silldorff and Garcia create.
Lucy Shea is fun in an Alice Kravitz way as the neighbor who suspects hanky panky but is supportive when it counts. Shea gives her character range that enhances the production.
Sidney Humes-James does well in several roles and is one more vocal ace, abetted by Shea and Emma Collins in presentational musical numbers that provide entertainment at the Indiana bar where Buzz hangs out while at the fair.
Carolina Kertesz’s mobile set serves Abraham’s production well while making you worry at times about the safety of the actors. There are two platforms. To get from one to the other, performers have to make a long stride that seems awkward. I know if I was in the cast, I’d spend every possible moment rehearsing going from one platform to another to make sure it looks graceful and worry-free. In most cases it is, but there was one near-accident the night I attended.
Susan McLernon’s costumes, especially for Francesca and the children, are right for the characters, especially when they illustrate Francesca’s good taste. Kat McLaughlin’s lighting and Orion Lopez-Ramirez’s sound design are assets, I am especially grateful that Lopez-Ramirez kept the sound level pitched in a way that favored rather than drowned out Silldorff’s at times soaring soprano.
The Bridges of Madison County, Princeton Summer Theater, Hamilton Murray Theater, Princeton University. Through Saturday, June 28, 7:30 p.m. Thursday through Saturday and 2 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. $30 to $35. www.princetonsummertheater.org or 609-359-2309.
