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Tampa Rep launches ‘The Bridges of Madison County’
Since assuming the position of Producing Artistic Director of Tampa Repertory Theatre in 2020, Emilia Sargent has been making sure the company does specific shows from its back-pocket wish list. Notably Next to Normal, The Elephant Man and All My Sons, all of which have been staged in recent years with spectacular results. Tampa Rep’s audience continues to grow.
This week, it’s time for the company to build The Bridges of Madison County.
When Robert James Waller’s 1992 romance novella became a runaway bestseller, America found itself in the grip of Bridges-mania. A Hollywood movie followed, with Meryl Streep as Iowa farm wife Francesca Johnson, and Clint Eastwood as visiting photographer Robert Kincaid. And they get … involved.
Tampa Rep’s production is the 2014 musical adaptation, with songs by Jason Robert Brown.
Sargent, who’s playing Francesca, says the score “incorporates elements of folk, country and classical music to reflect the characters’ inner worlds. Songs like ‘One Second and a Million Miles’ and ‘It All Fades Away’ are not only beautiful – they’re also deeply expressive of universal emotions like longing, regret and hope.
“For me, the music elevates the story to a spiritual level, allowing us to feel the characters’ emotions viscerally. There’s good reason for why this musical won the Tony for Outstanding New Score.”
Brown’s other well-known works include The Last Five Years, Songs For a New World, Honeymoon in Vegas and Mr. Saturday Night.
New York-based actor/singer Michael Hunsaker (Robert) is a longtime fan. “Jason Robert Brown is up there with Sondheim to me,” he explains. “Because he kind of revolutionized modern music theater. He brought a new sound to contemporary music theater – and now everybody pretty much copies him, to be honest. And I just love everything he writes.”
Although Waller’s beloved story is intact – these two disparate people find, in each other’s arms, something they were certain they’d lost – according to Hunsaker, the stage version takes it to another level.
“I think the music is enough to go see it. It’s almost an opera – I mean, there’s dialogue, of course, but the scope of the music is so grand. There’s the occasional uptempo songs, but it’s really about the huge ballad numbers.”
Sargent is emphatic that The Bridges of Madison County has lots more depth than your average Harlequin novel or Hallmark movie.
“Really, the musical is about more than romance – it’s about identity, time, and the fleeting nature of meaningful moments,” she says. “It deals with the complexity of adulthood, where decisions are rarely black and white, and every choice comes with both loss and gain. That’s not a ‘women’s issue.’ That’s a life issue.”
Francesca, she stresses, “is not simply a bored housewife looking for excitement – she is a fully realized person torn between two compelling but incompatible lives. The tension between duty and desire is a dilemma that cuts across gender lines, as well as age and cultural lines, for that matter.
“The Bridges of Madison County asks questions that are fundamental to the human condition.”
The cast also includes Jonathan Van Dyke as Bud, Francesca’s husband, with Michael Gregory, Amanda Cappello, Troy Ochoa-Rowland and Megan Lisko-Snelling.
It’s the first Tampa Rep show for Hunsaker, who grew up in Boca Raton and cut his professional teeth on South Florida theater stages.
After relocating to New York City in 1997, his first show was Children of Eden, the musical Stephen Schwartz wrote just prior to Wicked. Hunsaker was in the original cast at the production’s out-of-state tryout at New Jersey’s Paper Mill Playhouse.
When he was offered the role of Robert in Tampa Rep’s Bridges, he was at that moment appearing in another Brown musical, Parade.
An aspiring musical theater composer himself, Hunsaker is knee-deep into working on his 10th show, Fetching Water. “We’re just waiting for a space to open up in somebody’s season, before we bring it to off-Broadway,” he explains. “Because we want to have an out-of-town tryout, get the show smoothed out before we bring it to New York.
“We hope every theater in America wants to do a four-person musical about Jack and Jill and Dick and Jane.”
As for Sargent, “There is no way to really know what it takes to be the artistic director/CEO of a nonprofit arts organization until you start living it day to day. It truly is an all-encompassing pursuit that takes up a tremendous amount of time, focus and passion.”
When she took over, following the death of company founder C. David Frankel, “I didn’t know how deeply fulfilling it would be to look around and see artists, designers, crew, stage managers, directors, et cetera all working because of those efforts.
“To see and hear the audience’s responses as they share the experience of the stories we bring to life is truly the best.”
The Bridges of Madison County is directed by Michelle Petrucci. The musical director is Juan Rodriguez, who’ll conduct an eight-member band.
The production opens Friday, with a preview performance Thursday, in the Jaeb Theatre, part of the Straz Center for the Performing Arts. Find all details, and tickets, at this link.
