Even The Grumpy Guys Loved It

It's not

"If I loved You
Time and again I would try to say
All I wanted you to know..."

It's not

"When you walk through a storm
Hold your head up high
And don't be afraid of the dark"

It's not My Funny Valentine.

It's not The Lady is a Tramp

It's certainly not Edelweiss.

But when you're Adam Guettel and you're the grandson of Richard Rodgers and the son of Mary Rodgers, an accomplished and successful songwriter too, what'cha gonna do? Write weird.

"Light in the Piazza" is weird all right, musically. It was a hit on Broadway, but there was the thought that Richard Rodgers's grandson could write music to the R and H sections of the phone book and have a success on Broadway, first time around. Plotnik had read a lot about it and expected to hate it. Instead, he was completely captivated.

It's been that kind of a week. He thought he'd like "Dreamgirls." No way. He wasn't sure what he'd think about a 55-year-old play like "Trouble in Mind." He loved it. He was sure he'd dislike "Light in the Piazza." He really loved it. Today he's going to see Shakespeare in Marin. He is pretty sure he'll either hate or love or not care or care a lot about this one.

JJ-aka-PP next year when the seasons all open for all the theater companies here, will you PLEASE take two weeks off and get your silly rear end out here? If we wait for you to retire all the shows will be in Chinese.

In the promo for "Light in the Piazza" it says that Adam Guettel only wrote one song that his grandfather heard, from his sickbed in the next room. The house piano was on the wall adjoining grampa's room. Rodgers's reaction was: "Could you play that one a little louder?"

Pretty slick eh?

Plotnik has no idea if anyone else will love this play as much as he and Ducknik did, but if this is an indication: The Grumpy Guys BOTH loved it! "You got me this time," they said, when Plotnik grabbed R's shoulder during intermission. "We can't believe it," they said.

(You can read the San Francisco Theater Blog review of "Light in the Piazza" here.)