Kelli O’Hara has been nominated for a Tony four times, but this may well be her year following unanimous critical raves for her performance as an Italian émigré Iowa housewife and mother in “The Bridges of Madison County.” Based on the bestselling novel by Robert James Waller, the musical gives expression to the passionate yearnings awakened in Francesca when Robert, a National Geographic photographer, stumbles into her lonely and resigned life.
Even critics, like Ben Brantley of the New York Times, who had reservations about the show itself, fell victim to O’Hara’s protean charms. He wrote, “Still, when you have a central performance as sensitive, probing and operatically rich and lustrous as Ms. O’Hara’s, you won’t find me kvetching too loud.”
The praise for O’Hara and the mixed-to-positive reviews — the kvetchers were in the minority — throw the musical a lifeline. It had not been selling well before the opening and there were rumors that it might close. Now “Bridges” is set for a run up to the Tony nominations in May, and it is likely to garner a lion’s share. In addition to O’Hara and the show itself, nods are likely to go to co-star Steven Pasquale, who plays the shutterbug, director Bartlett Sher, several of the design team, and two more to Jason Robert Brown, the show’s composer and orchestrator.
Even though Brown had written the show with O’Hara in mind, there was some trepidation that the blond, blue-eyed, and fair-skinned actor could pull it off. Her porcelain beauty had worked well for the brain-damaged American teen in “The Light in the Piazza” and the feisty heroines in “The Pajama Game,” “South Pacific,” and “Nice Work If You Can Get It.” But a weary Italian war bride who’d long ago given up on romance? The doubts were given more currency when the show tried out this summer at the Williamstown Theatre Festival with Elena Shaddow as Francesca, since O’Hara was about to give birth to her second child. The dark-haired and solemn-faced Shaddow walked away with reviews, increasing the pressure on O’Hara to deliver in the Broadway transfer.
And deliver she has. Even the New York Post’s Elisabeth Vincentelli, whose Italian heritage made her doubly skeptical, surrendered to what she called O’Hara’s “finely tuned” and graceful performance. “Decked out in a brunette wig, O’Hara sings like a dream and is unexpectedly funny as the Italian war bride, Francesca,” wrote Vincentelli. “Indeed, she doesn’t look any faker than that other famously swarthy star, Meryl Streep, who played the role in the ’95 movie.”
While O’Hara is now the frontrunner for the Tony Award, she will face stiff competition from such strong potential contenders as Jessie Mueller (“Beautiful”), Idina Menzel (“If/Then”), Sutton Foster (“Violet”), and Audra McDonald, the five-time Tony Award winner who will star in a revival of the Billie Holiday bio-musical, “Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar & Grill.” That’s not to mention two possible newcomers to the game: Mary Bridget Davies for her titular performance in the short-lived “A Night with Janis Joplin,” which will re-open in March off-Broadway; and Michelle Williams, who will make her Broadway debut in the Sam Mendes-Rob Marshall revival of “Cabaret.”
The race for Leading Actress in a Musical just got more interesting — and a hell of a lot more competitive.
