The Light in the Piazza

Margaret Johnson is a well-heeled American Southern lady traveling in Tuscany with her beautiful grown daughter. Though an accident has frozen Clara's mental age at about 10, a sweet Italian boy falls in love with her artless innocence, and his family follows suit. What happens next is both understandable and a little queasy-making--if these nice Italians with their patriarchal ways don't notice that Clara is actually a child, should her mother spoil her chance at married happiness by telling them? Hilary Huber peoples the story with a sympathetic international cast of characters and keeps the morally murky proceedings somehow as light as the title. The soufflé falls if you think too hard about it, but if you can resist, this production is a delight. B.G. (c) AudioFile 2006, Portland, Maine