Those looking forward to the brassy pageantry and old-fashioned romance of The Music Man may need an attitude adjustment to shift gears to The Bridges of Madison County, being premiered locally this month by the Raven Players.
The resident theater company of Healdsburg’s Raven Performing Arts Theater has slated the North Bay debut of The Bridges of Madison County, a musical based on the 1992 bestselling novel by Robert James Waller. Joe Gellura, a veteran director for the Players, will direct the production, which will run from March 14-30.
“A serendipitous change of plans! Bridges is wonderful! The idea of getting a second chance at passion is so full of promise, and so full of heartbreak,” Gellura said, telegraphing the plot. “It’s an incredibly moving story and I think one that audiences will connect with on so many levels.”
Gerrula has been involved with the Raven Players since its formation, and with theater since elementary school. He directed his first musical, South Pacific, in 1962; now 86, he directed or acted in many other plays in the meantime, while holding down a career as a high school science teacher. He moved to Healdsburg in 1992 and helped Tom Brand, Carol Noack and Jane St. Claire found the Raven Players 10 years later.
The Music Man, the musical originally scheduled for this month, was cancelled when performance rights were withdrawn on Nov. 15 “with no explanation,” Gellura said. Although a national company may begin touring late in the year, it didn’t seem like a conflict. “Who knows what the machinations in New York are all about,” he said, sighing.
He and music director Les Pfutzenreuter, with whom he’s directed several other musicals (Gypsy, Hello Dolly, Joseph and the Technicolor Dreamcoat), sat down and went through scores of plays looking for a replacement that could be produced relatively quickly to fill the “March Musical” slot on the Raven calendar.
“We were down to Man of La Mancha and this show,” Gellura said. “And Bridges was a show that I personally wanted to do since I saw it on Broadway 11 years ago, with the original cast.” That production won two Tony Awards, including for Best Original Score and Best Orchestration for the composer, Jason Robert Brown. His music is energetic, poppy and tuneful, but his hits are few.
“The downside of the show is that it’s completely unknown” Gellura said—an understatement, when compared the list of familiar tunes such as “Good Night My Someone,” “Ya Got Trouble,” “Till There Was You” and “76 Trombones” that emerged from The Music Man.
Gellura, who has lengthy and deep theatrical ties throughout the Bay Area, said, “I know the Company in San Jose did it maybe seven or eight years ago, I just don’t know anyone else. There are those shows that everyone is grabbing for and fighting for, and then there are these other shows.”
The novel by Robert James Waller, a fantasy of an affair between a rural wife and a wandering photographer, became a bestselling romance upon its 1992 publication, and the 1995 movie that followed starred two of the biggest names in film at the time, Clint Eastwood (who directed) and Meryl Streep (who was nominated for an Oscar).
The transition to the Broadway stage was not an unusual leap for hit movies at the time, see for instance Jason Robert Brown. Compared to Stephen Sondheim in his approach to musical theater, he was involved in a number of other musical adaptations, including Urban Cowboy and Honeymoon in Vegas.
Any play’s success rides on its cast, and the roles of Francesca and Robert are played here by Katie Watts-Whitaker and Elliot Davis. Both are veteran Raven players who have proven their singing chops before—Watts-Whitaker is in a folk band, as it happens, and Davis held down the lead in Joseph and the Technicolor Dreamcoat last year.
Like the Broadway show, a live, nine-piece orchestra will accompany the performances, under the direction of Pfutzenreuter. The fact that this production—with a total of 10 cast members—was pulled together in a relatively quick three months speaks to the close-knit, high-quality network that is the Raven Players, which will be on display the next three weekends at the Raven.
‘The Bridges of Madison County’ will be performed at the Raven Theater on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays from March 14-30, plus on Thursday, March 20. Tickets $10 (students) to $40 (general) at raventheater.org or at the door, 115 North St.
