Tony-award winner Bartlett Sher’s newest musical, The Bridges of Madison County, is lighting up New York’s dismal winter. Based on the hugely popular novel by Robert James Waller, the show, with lyrics and music by Jason Robert Brown, and based on a book by Marsha Norman, stars the luminously lovely Kelli O’Hara and Steven Pasquale as the tall, dark stranger.
The story is a simple one, a story that plays into women’s universal fantasies. O’Hara is Francesca, a beautiful Italian woman, transplanted to a farm in Iowa, the wife of a good-hearted farmer. Pasquale plays the stranger who passes through town, lights her fire, and then leaves her, changed forever.
O’Hara and Sher have worked together before, most notably in the Lincoln Center production of “South Pacific,” an enormously successful production that brought visitors from around the globe. Her voice is clear and beautiful, and she endows any role she plays with a unique quality of lightness. She seems almost otherworldly, a creature from another time and place. The lighting and settings evoke the eternal American heartland. This is a lovely show, a fine addition to the Broadway season.
Photo by by Joan Marcus