VILLA DIODATI: A Mary Shelley Phantasia

In Villa Diodati: A Mary Shelley Phantasia a contemporary couple chased by the specter of imminent death visits the Villa Diodati, where an evening of telling ghost stories includes Mary Shelley's canonical novel Frankenstein. The couple is only a framing device (one defects to play Byron while the other haunts the stage and takes a turn as Mary Shelley's dead mother), which is quite suitable for the subject matter (Frankenstein brackets its well-known story of the titular scientist and his creature with several such devices). It serves to blur past and present in an enjoyably eerie way.

Despite the framing device and the discussion of Shelley's intellectual inheritance from her mother, Mary Wollstonecraft (author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman", this formal complexity does not seem to engender a complex portrait of Mary Shelley herself. The show treats her writing as a sort of emotional crutch to take the edge off her grief at the loss of her daughter, never portraying her as a serious intellectual and artistic figure in the manner of her husband and Byron —though she was, and they treated her as such. Far from being a marginalized female author who has only recently been rediscovered, Shelley was a highly-regarded writer and thinker in her own time —a fact that one would never guess from this portrayal of her as a sister, a mother, and a wife, but never a creator. Villa Diodati takes a worthwhile stab, though, at exploring the issues of motherhood that thematically permeate Frankenstein, though the extended dream sequence in which it does so, resurrecting Wollstonecraft in the process, runs off the rails into confusion.

It's Colette Inez's clunky, expository lyrics that are this musical's main flaw. Inez, a poet, has either failed to grasp or consciously resisted the idea of scansion. The awkward rhythms of her lyrics defy the score, and most of the songs sound like recitatives. When Mira J. Spektor's melodic arrangements of Byron, Shelley, and Wordsworth poems take the stage, things pick up a little onstage, but Inez's leaden rhythms and broad telling-not-showing ("Death, death, death stalks my daughter/But a passion for writing/keeps her death at bay," or, "Mary, let us flee England, take Claire, your half/sister, and my wife, Harriet, if she will agree/to non-exclusive love with me") soon return to bring it down again. The failure of the lyrics to find any internal rhythm is pretty nearly unforgivable in a piece populated by so many poets.

Villa Diodati succeeds in being effectively and artistically creepy, in creating a cleverly constructed set of parallels to Frankenstein that tie its characters and creators to the present; also in offering us the chance to spend time with several fascinating characters (Byron, especially, is skillfully rendered by Mark Campbell). Ultimately, though, this show doesn't add much value to its source material.

Villa Diodati: A Mary Shelley Phantasia runs through October 4th at the 45th Street Theater: Sep 22nd at 8:00 pm, Sep 23rd at 1:00 pm, Sep 27th at 4:30 pm, Oct 1st at 8:00 pm, Friday, Oct 3rd at 4:30 pm, Oct 4th at 8:00 pm.

Mollie Eisenberg, Curtain Up
Sept 30, 2008

Villa Diodati

Part of The New York Musical Theatre Festival

At Villa Diodati, the new musical concerning the throbbing passions surrounding the genesis of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, you will never find yourself shouting, “It’s alive!” Mira J. Spektor (music and libretto) and Colette Inez (lyrics and libretto) have imbued their show with all the classic elements of success - luxurious love, vibrant-voiced performers, lush poetry, and a visionary director (Rob Urbinati) - but have not yet discovered how to make it thrillingly musical but not dramatically inert.

Spektor and Inez have enlisted Lord Byron, Percy Shelley, and William Wordsworth to help ornament a story about two married American tourists (Sarah Arikian and Mark Campbell) taking what could be their last trip in Europe: The man is awaiting the results of an unspecified medical test that could spell an early end to his life. The two visit the Cologny manor where the betrothed Mary (Elizabeth Cherry) and Percy (Sal Sabella) and the illicitly paired Byron and Claire (Mary’s sister, played by Lauren Hauser) communed during the summer of 1816, to be haunted by the quartet’s ghosts out to prove what living life to the fullest really means.

The four read from works such as “When We Two Parted” (Byron), “One Summer Evening” (Wordsworth), and “I Arise With Dreams of Thee” (Shelley), which Spektor has set to unabashedly operatic music that wraps you in the warm embrace of the writings’ timeless romanticism. Her and Inez’s original compositions, such as the melancholy-hopeful “A Perfect Day,” Frankenstein’s Monster’s rumbling “Conceived in a Flask,” and especially the soaring “There Is No Heaven but My Love” fit in seamlessly among them.

But the superb performers, Urbinati’s declarative staging, Thomas Carlo Bo’s elegant musical direction (and, with Spektor, sumptuous orchestrations for piano, violin, and cello), and Sidney Shannon’s elaborate period costumes can’t disguise the show’s complete lack of action. After the tourists arrive, they literally vanish into the manor’s history (he as Byron; she as Mary’s mother, Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin) and don’t resume their own lives until the inconclusive finale. The writers they conjure speak and sing many beautiful things, but leave behind few specific insights into the creation of either art or life: Byron’s assumption of the Monster role and Mary’s scene-length dream about being visited by her dead mother (Arikian) and losing Percy in an accident go nowhere, if rapturously; the details and derailings of the various couplings are at best implied, and don’t inform much beyond themselves.

Gorgeous though the songs are, as written and sung, they’re not quite exquisite enough to overcome the scenario’s inherent dullness. The book either needs an injection of life, or it needs to be ejected altogether - a program insert states that portions of the work were first heard as a song cycle, and what’s here suggests that’s still their ideal method of presentation. But the songs unquestionably deserve to be heard: You’ll probably hear no better musical all this year than Villa Diodati. You will, however, almost certainly see many far better shows.

Matthew Murray, Talkin' Broadway
Sept 29, 2008

Villa Diodati: A Mary Shelley Phantasia

According to all reports, in the summer of 1816 the Swiss lakeside Villa Diodati was awash with turbulent romance and creativity. That heady atmosphere is intermittently captured in the New York Musical Theatre Festival entry Villa Diodati: A Mary Shelley Phantasia.

The villa's inhabitants that summer were celebrity poets Lord Byron and Percy Shelley and their respective loves, Claire Clairmont and her half-sister Mary Shelley. Mary was particularly busy, tending to her baby while also beginning work on her novel Frankenstein.

Composer Mira J. Spektor has written a score in classic chamber-opera mode, arranged for piano, cello, and violin. While it doesn't quite soar, it blossoms on occasion into fetching melody and provides lots of impressive high notes for the three female singers — Elizabeth Cherry as Mary, Lauren Hauser as Claire, and Sarah Arikian as the ghost of Mary's mother. Ably handling the baritone notes are Sal Sabella as a rebellious but loving Shelley and Mark Campbell as a dashingly bipolar Byron.

The libretto is by Spektor and Colette Inez. The lyrics are mostly by Inez, although Spektor wrote some and there are contributions from other wordsmiths — namely Byron, Percy Shelley, and William Wordsworth. Directed by Rob Urbinati, the show focuses on the quartet's first night at the villa, including partying, romantic tensions, lovemaking, and uneasy dreams for Mary. These proceedings are framed by a visit to the villa by a contemporary couple (played by Arikian and Campbell) with concerns of their own. But at the close, the creative spirits of the four provide inspirational uplift for the visiting couple.

Both libretto and lyrics are packed with information about the character's lives, but details get blurred in the singing and uncertain storytelling, never jelling into a compelling tale. The framing device also seems perfunctory. Still, Villa Diodati offers a taste of four complex personalities, informed by passion for art and told in an artful if not totally satisfying blend of music and drama.

Ron Cohen, Backstage
Sept 24, 2008