Thoughts on Living On Love

Who is one of the luckiest girls in the world?  ME!  I'm so grateful that I have generous friends who share the bounty of free tickets with me - yesterday, I got to take a handsome friend to see one of the final previews of the new Broadway play, Living on Love, thanks to a pal who offered us comps.  The play features the opera megastar Renee Fleming and one of my uber-favorites, the divine Douglas Sills.  I'll admit I went in with a little apprehension, having read not-great comments on the internet about the show.  I decided to just go with the flow and see what would happen...

Happily, I had a really good time!  Living on Love is pretty silly, but it made me laugh a lot, and, god love him, Doug Sills even moved me at one point.  How he found a real moment in all that silliness is really a testament to his skill.  Of course, I AM predisposed to love him, so there's that.  The show is still in previews, though I would doubt they're making changes by now, so I'll only offer a few thoughts.

Living on Love is based on a 30s play by Garson Kanin called Peccadillo, which I don't know at all.  This incarnation is the story of an opera maestro and his opera diva wife, who've grown apart over the years - at the opening of the play, the diva is on tour and the maestro is home alone, supposedly working on his memoirs with a nebbishy young writer, played by Jerry O'Connell.  Their working relationship isn't going all that well, so during the wacky hijinks that ensue over the course of the play, O'Connell ends up working with the opera diva (Renee Fleming, of course) on her memoirs and young assistant assistant editor Anna Chlumsky works with the maestro.  They're all larger-than-life personalities, even the shy writer and editor, and it's fun to see how the high emotion of opera and its artists affect the younger characters.

photo credit: Joan Marcus

These four wackadoos are joined by a pair of butlers, who are really a treat and their plot 'reveal' at the end was quite unexpected.  At least to me.  The audience just ate them up.  I won't say anything else about them because I think the less you know, the more fun you'll have.  I'll just finish by saying they were terrific.  As were Fleming and Sills.  Fleming is still working on her comic timing and line delivery, but she's really quite witty and charming on stage.  Of course, she IS an opera diva PLAYING an opera diva, but she's very deft in how she lives up to and sends up the stereotype.  It's also a treat to hear her sing snippets of some of the famous opera arias I'm sure she's sung a million times in other contexts, plus she delivers a sublime "Always" late in the show.  Of course, every time she sang, I started to wish she would sing the whole aria, but I guess that would've made the show five hours long.

photo credit: Andrew Eccles

Douglas Sills is quite simply a riot as the hot-blooded, big-talking Italian maestro.  He has some adorably goofy dialogue (I was especially fond of 'spooky author' instead of 'ghost writer') and some fun physical comedy.  He also has a lovely tender moment at the end that brought tears to my eyes.  The play is silly silly, but Sills is still finding the pathos and the fear of getting older and left behind in this vainglorious conductor.  

I believe there was some sort of kerfuffle with some props last night, it seemed as if they were adlibbing awkwardly at one point, but maybe I somehow missed how it got started.  I wasn't quite getting the enjoyment out of the moment the rest of the audience seemed to be, but I guess that was me.  The audience really seemed to enjoy themselves throughout - there was a lot of laughter and good will throughout the performance.  I'll be interested to see how the play is received in the press; it's pretty old-fashioned and doesn't really aim to do anything but make you laugh, but hey, there is nothing wrong with that.  Anything that makes me laugh (and cry) is ok by me.  And anytime Doug Sills gets to strut his stuff onstage is also ok by me.  So...it seems that last night was ok by me!  :)