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Living On Love
By Russell Bouthiller Making her Broadway debut, three-time Grammy winning opera star Renée Fleming takes to the stage of the Longacre Theatre in the new play by two-time Tony winner Joe DiPietro, Living on Love, inspired by the Garson Kanin work, Peccadillo. Also starring Douglas Sills and directed by Tony winner Kathleen Marshall, this screwball comedy takes a look at romance among the upper registers.
Set in an elegant mid-century penthouse, designed richly by Derek McLane, Living on Love opens with young writer Robert Samson (Jerry O’Connell) waiting impatiently for the maestro Vito De Angelis (Sills) to emerge from his bedroom. It is mid afternoon and they had a morning appointment. Samson has been hired to ghostwrite De Angelis’s memoirs and there has not been a great deal of progress. Snooping through things, Samson discovers an album of “Tosca,” performed by the conductor’s famous diva wife, Raquel (Fleming). Alone on stage, Samson states to no one in good expository fashion that this is a rare recording. Of course, you know that it will be smashed later on. Predictability starts early in this play. Thus, indulging his passion, Samson plays the record, mouthing the libretto in grand mock performance. Meanwhile upstage, the disheveled maestro makes his entrance. With an accent that is supposed to be Italian—it’s about as Italian as Ramen noodles—Sills delivers every line at such a high decibel, you’d think he was aiming for the furthest seat in the family circle. It’s as if someone were whispering in his ear, “there’s no such thing as a small gesture.” That someone may well be director Marshall who has every one of the actors over-emphasizing at every possible instance. Mugging and preening and posing and gesticulating can all be great fun when there is a script underneath to support the players. In this case, the player seems to be there to support the script, which, at its core, has jokes that are short on laughs and long in the tooth. Surprisingly, Renée Fleming, the famed opera star, the player who might seem out of her element is the most comfortable on stage, though the character seems a distant reflection of the person playing it. Firstly, there is nothing inventive or new or challenging about an opera singer who is self-absorbed. Let’s face it: we don’t think of the word “diva” and envision a frumpy woman serving at a soup kitchen. But Fleming gives an appealing performance and is the equivalent to an EMT first responder to a theatrical disaster. She looks good in Michael Krass’s gowns as well.
Jerry O’Connell holds back a bit more than Sills, but his character is as equally silly and his impersonation of the diva at the beginning of the play makes it somewhat incredulous, later on, when he goes after his replacement ghostwriter, Iris Peabody, played with noble control by Anna Chlumsky. Samson goes on to ghostwrite for Raquel’s memoirs, which is utterly implausible. And, rounding out the cast, Blake Hammond and Scott Roberson are Bruce and Eric, two servants who provide a last-minute shoehorned subplot. In the end, miraculously, lothario husband Vito and the not-so-bad-after-all Raquel give up their futile romantic dalliances with their ghostwriters and come to appreciate each other. They kiss at the end, as all good comedies provide. The Longacre Theatre 
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