Chicago Tribune
- Highly Recommended
"...Formatively complex yet soaring with romantic aspiration, Adam Guettel’s astonishing music for “The Light in the Piazza” is the most beautiful score written for the American musical theater in at least 20 years. It is a near-perfect composition at the heart of what has, over a long and tortured journey, matured into a magnificent theatrical achievement."
Chicago Sun Times
- Somewhat Recommended
"...This Broadway incarnation of "The Light in the Piazza," only slightly altered from its earlier Goodman Theatre version, offers many of the same rewards and just as many problems. Guettel's score attempts to blend grand opera, operetta and something more tremulous that is his very own, but the overall mix feels uneven."
SouthtownStar
- Somewhat Recommended
"...Although it is a lush, romantic story of first love, "The Light in the Piazza" skips a beat with a musical score that doesn't quite measure up."
Pioneer Press
- Somewhat Recommended
"...It's possible to win six Tony Awards -- for original score, orchestration, lighting design, costume design, scenic design and best actress in a musical -- and still fall short of being a great evening of theater. Such is the case with The Light in the Piazza.""
Chicago Reader
- Highly Recommended
"...This touring edition of director Bartlett Sher's 2005 Broadway production stars the expressive Christine Andreas, who perfectly conveys Margaret's struggle to reconcile hope and logic. Katie Rose Clarke and David Burnham are thrilling and poignant as the young lovers, and Jonathan Hammond and Wendi Bergamini provide fiery, sometimes comic contrast as Fabrizio's womanizing brother and his volatile wife."
Time Out Chicago
- Somewhat Recommended
"...A carefully calibrated production could spackle the gap. But the intimate, precise Piazza is adrift in the yawning Auditorium Theatre and washed out by a mannered, fluttery-Southerner turn from Andreas, whose difficulty sustaining her notes disappoints. In an otherwise all-right cast, Burnham’s turbo lungs and beaming energy give the sung-in-Italian scenes operatic breadth."
ChicagoCritic
- Somewhat Recommended
"...The Light in the Piazza contains enough romance, lush scenery and a compelling story where love can overcome handicaps to render a worthy evening of theatre. The audience liked the show more than I did. I guess the arcane oblique lyrics were too much for me. Broadway musical lovers will either hate this show or love it."
Chicago Stage and Screen
- Somewhat Recommended
"...The story itself, adapted by Craig Lucas from a 1962 movie starring Olivia de Havilland, is lighter than air romantic folly, in which the mother’s devotion to her "developmentally delayed" daughter offers the evening’s most touching moments. It’s really a delicate and arty chamber opera, which is perhaps not showcased to its best advantage in the cavernous Auditorium Theatre. That physical distance made the already distant work feel shallow and remote, despite the full throttle performances of its three leads."
