Off note but on key

Souvenir: A Fantasia on the Life of
Florence Foster Jenkinsis a musical
about a tone-deaf soprano

LOVABLY NUTS: Verrucci & Barillaro

by NEIL BOYCE

Speeding by with only three performances in The Next Wave mini-fest of musical theatre, Stephen Temperley’s 2005 play, Souvenir: A Fantasia on the Life of Florence Foster Jenkins, is a funny, tender and witty piece that its two actors gobble up.

The piece unfolds as a memoir. Cosme McMoon (Chris Barillaro) is playing piano in a dive, recalling his time as accompanist to the most tuneless, least-talented and loveliest singer ever: Florence Foster Jenkins (Nadia Verrucci).

In a career that spanned over 30 years, culminating in a performance at Carnegie Hall in 1944, the real-life Jenkins thrilled audiences with her “unique” renditions of classical arias. Wealthy enough to indulge her whim of opera stardom, the gaudily dressed Jenkins would perform in salons for her society friends, aided by a pianist who would try to make sense of it all. The Rocky Horror of its day, audiences flocked to see the shows as a spectacle-du-jour.

She’s had two musicals written about her (the other, Peter Quilter’s Glorious!, was staged by Centaur theatre in 2007), and her few recordings are still available, repackaged in collections like The Glory (????) of the Human Voice and Murder on the High Cs.

As Jenkins’ accompanist, McMoon begins with the question posed by many over the course of the singer’s lengthy career: “Why did she do it?”—to which he adds, “Why did I do it?” After their first rehearsal together, a stunned McMoon stares uncomprehendingly at Jenkins—she claims to have perfect pitch—who replies, “You must forgive me if I get carried away and obfuscate the tempi.”

But where Quilter wrote the Jenkins story as a farce, Temperley’s version shows an eccentric but charming woman with a deep love of music.

Verrucci is sublime in the role, filling her character with a wonderful array of tics, gestures, and absent-minded comments—believing in her gift, as McMoon comments, the way that a child might. She’s Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard, with a manic smile plastered on her face and a perpetually startled expression, sprinkling her conversation with diva-like utterances like mille grazie.

Chris Barillaro’s great live piano work added much to the success of the show. “You see a lot from the piano bench,” McMoon observes, and whether he’s playing a bouncy Cole Porter number or trying to wrestle Mozart’s Queen of the Night aria from Jenkins’ death grip, Barillaro was a perfect foil to Verrucci’s excesses—and it’s through his character’s loving gaze that we see Jenkins as more than a joke.

Director Stephen Pietrantoni has difficulty sustaining the euphoria built up in the first act—though this is partly a problem with the text—and his direction overall is rather lackluster and light on ideas. Further, Barillaro has a propensity to mug for the audience—wringing out his astonished reactions to Verrucci’s antics. He doesn’t need to: Barillaro’s a likeable and gifted actor-musician who’s best when he reins himself in.

It’s the actors who carry it. “What matters is what you hear in your head” is McMoon’s verdict, and as Verrucci emerges in the finale, she performs Ave Maria as Jenkins must have imagined she heard it: gracefully, sweetly and in tune—capping the story perfectly.

SOUVENIR AT THE MCCORD MUSEUM
(690 SHERBROOKE W.) AUG. 22 AND
27, 8 P.M. TICKETS: (514) 790-1245 OR
FROM CETM AT (514) 504-9339