With her family away at the 1965 state fair, Francesca Johnson looks forward to a rare four days alone on her Iowa farm. But when ruggedly handsome National Geographic photographer Robert Kincaid pulls into her driveway seeking directions, what happens in those four days may very well alter the course of Francesca's life. Based on the best-selling novel, and developed by a Pulitzer- and Tony Award-winning creative team, this new musical captures the lyrical expanse of America's heartland along with the yearning entangled in the eternal question, 'What if...?'"
The Bridges of Madison County stars four-time Tony Award nominee Kelli O'Hara (South Pacific, The Pajama Game) and Steven Pasquale (Rescue Me, reasons to be pretty). It features a score by Tony Award winner Jason Robert Brown (Parade, The Last Five Years) and a libretto by Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize winner Marsha Norman (The Color Purple, The Secret Garden). It will be directed by Tony Award winner Bartlett Sher (The Light in the Piazza, South Pacific), who reunites with his celebrated Tony Award-winning South Pacific design team, including scenic designer Michael Yeargan, costume designer Catherine Zuber, and lighting designer, Donald Holder. Sound Design is by Jon Weston (How to Succeed..., The Color Purple).
'The Bridges of Madison County' is a ravishingly beautiful musical play based on the phenomenally popular 1992 weeper about a four-day love affair between an Iowa farm wife from Italy and a worldly photographer. In other words, this is unblushing Harlequin Romance-style material bound in top-quality leather. So many intelligent, gifted artists are involved in this adaptation that we wish the objective were deeper than a high-toned bodice ripper with comic-relief detours into conventional Broadway. But Kelli O'Hara and Steven Pasquale, magnificently magnetic as Francesca and Robert, make the ripping feel like real heartbreak. And director Bartlett Sher and his creative team from 'South Pacific' are storytellers who understand the luscious power of simplicity.
[O'Hara's] openhearted performance is as believably acted and immaculately sung as anything she's ever done...She's so fine, in fact, that she casts a shadow over Mr. Pasquale, an excellent singer who lacks the redeeming touch of mystery that Mr. Eastwood brought to the too-good-to-be-true role of Robert, the photographer (and who is a decade too young for the part)...Up to a point, Mr. Brown's warm, expansive score is an equally strong selling point for 'Bridges.' Parts of it are as musically exciting as anything heard on Broadway since Stephen Sondheim's glory days...But Mr. Brown is rather better at writing scenes than songs, and except for 'Another Life,' a sweetly folk-flavored ballad sung in a flashback by Robert's ex-wife (Whitney Bashor), none of the songs in 'The Bridges of Madison County' has a clear-cut, boldly shaped melodic profile-or, for that matter, a truly memorable lyric.
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