The Light in the Piazza

Intiman Theatre

Through July 19. Here's the weird thing: Despite some insurmountable drawbacks, this new chamber musical is worth seeing. The gentle, sparse score is played expertly on nothing more than a piano, cello, violin, harp, and standup bass--and all 16 songs sway and hum with light, upbeat experimentation or gorgeous lullaby melodies. Two songs in particular, the first act's "Dividing Day" and the second act's "Let's Walk," are pure gems. (A smart rock band would cover "Dividing Day," fast.)

It's telling, though, that both standout songs feature big moments for Victoria Clark's character, Margaret. Indeed, Clark's presence and confidently fantastic performance (falling out of love with her husband and quietly in love with some sort of new freedom) are the prime reasons to see Piazza.

Now, on to those insurmountable drawbacks. The show, written by Craig Lucas (book) and Adam Guettel (music and lyrics), is irreparably hampered by its earnest early-'60's trappings. The play is based on an Elizabeth Spencer novella first published in its entirety in the New Yorker in 1959, and then published as a novella in 1960, and it just doesn't translate to 2003. I don't want to give away the plot, but Margaret's "triumphant" let-love-rule final decision, which surely resonated with humanist Kennedy-era audiences hungry to shatter the stereotypes and prejudices of the cold 1950s, feels naive and unrealistic--even wrong-headed--today.

Here's a much bigger problem, though: Even taken in its own right, the centerpiece--a supposedly transcendent love affair between Margaret's daughter Clara (Celia Keenan-Bolger) and a young Italian boy named Fabrizio (Steven Pasquale)--falls relentlessly flat. Despite the pretty love songs exchanged by the young lovers (the title song is particularly good), I never believed or even clearly understood why the pair felt the way they did. Did she just like his Italian accent? Did he just like her American boobs? (Margaret and Clara, American Southerners, are vacationing in Fabrizio's Florence.) It's also a bit of a drag that at times, Keenan-Bolger and Pasquale's singing voices are quiet and strained. Lucky for them (as well as the audience), there's Clark's performance to fall back on--and she kept me glued to my seat. JOSH FEIT

Quickies Volume 4

Live Girls! Theater

Through June 29. In a womblike space above an antique-importer's shop, a group of energetic and talented women have come together to give birth to six short plays that are, for the most part, spirited and intriguing.

The first half of the evening focuses on women lost in their own worlds of death, dreams, and traffic. Amber Hubert's Pearl and Eloise Are Dead comes off more as a tossed-away class exercise in dramatic form, but offers a couple of original sparks in explicating the boredom-filled lives of the deceased. Fiona Torres' El Corrido de Manny Cruz plays with form, too, but manages to create an involved tango of perspective with the moments leading up to a car accident. Zoe Fitzgerald's Circles, while more linear than the others, examines the vortex created when dreams and memories mix.

Self-conscious character studies dominate the second half of the evening. Linda Eisenstein's Pig Patter (deftly acted by Opal Peachey, Nicole Booth and Jaime Navarro) is an all-out hilarious look at the dynamics between three teenage girls during a "boy crisis." Rebecca Ritchie's play about a woman buying a bra after a double mastectomy is, of course, the most serious piece of the evening, but is so filled with Outrage! it misses the opportunity to affect true sympathy with the fidgety audience. Balance (by Dori Appel), while verging on being a predictable story of mental illness, is so convincingly illuminated by Alicia Barta that the overused dramatic topic can be forgiven.

Kate Jaeger--a woman who could out-drag a drag queen in record time--returns as hostess to this evening of shorts and does a fine job of creating a cabaret atmosphere out of what could easily be a drawn-out showcase of graduates from Cornish College of the Arts. GREGORY ZURA

Dinner & Dreams

Teatro ZinZanni

2301 Sixth Ave

Open run. If you hate audience participation as much as most sane persons do, Teatro ZinZanni is a very fresh and special ring of hell. If you love it, you're clearly on the crack. Either way, isn't it novel to see the host, El Vez, "The Mexican Elvis," outside of Bumbershoot?

That depends. Do I have to like the soup?

There is no question about why Teatro ZinZanni is more popular than a drunken cheerleader. At $89-$109 a pop, it is possibly the spendiest show around, yet has been selling out here and in San Francisco for four years running. Shows like this aren't what you'd call dime-a-dozen. It's staged, for example, in its very own hand-sewn antique spiegeltent--a billowing velvet pavilion of wooden floors, mirrors, gold brocade, and leaded-glass everything.

Then there's the contortionist. I can't tell you the last time I saw a ferociously beautiful Parisian woman (Aurelia Cats) in a leopard-print unitard French-braid her various body parts while perched on a swinging trapeze. It was mesmerizing. As were the absolutely hilarious acrobatic shenanigans of Die Maiers (connubially joined trapeze artists Sabine Maier and Joachim Mohr), and the lovely hand-balancing of Elena Borodina. Kevin Kent is a brilliant improv artist and quite spectacular in a corset, and the yodeling dominatrix? That goatherd shall be lonely no more.

Still, ZinZanni requires a significant commitment, of time and goodwill as much as cash. It's three and a half hours long, with food that smacks in selection and presentation of really good airline food (I don't recommend the soup), and, well, just how long does juggling remain entertaining, anyhow? Exactly. And there's lot's of juggling. Teatro ZinZanni is exactly the sort of theater extravaganza you have to see... exactly once. ADRIAN RYAN