Love and hunger stemfrom the same primal instincts or so we are led to believe in The Baker's Wife.
The play tells the story of the small French village of Concorde during the summer of the 1935. The village has been beset by the recent death of their baker, which has left them breadless for a whopping seven weeks.
The musical opens in Claude's cafe as the villagers await the arrival of the new baker. When the aptly named Aimable Castagnet at last arrives with his much younger bride, Genevieve, the entire village is amazed and amused at the tremendous age difference between the newlyweds. Dominique, the town's young stud is also taken aback by the difference and sets on to make Genevieve his. After some resistance, Genevieve relents and leaves her husband behind for her "beautiful young man." Aimable is so taken with grief that he can no longer do his work and the villagers, who must have their bread, band together to bring the baker's wife home.
The show, adapted from the film La Femme du Boulanger by Joseph Stein (of Fiddler on the Roof fame), includes witty commentary on the nature of love and marriage. Stein's inclusion of the unhappily married Denise and Claude, Hortense and her bullying husband Barnaby, three beautiful "nieces" who bring pleasure to the philandering Monsieur le Marquis and an acrid old spinster named Therese, pointedly reminds the audience of the old adage -- men can't live with them, can't live without them.
Stephen Schwartz (who also has Godspell, Pippin, and Children of Eden to his credit) writes some terrific music for this show. Included in the score are the two very funny full-company songs "If It Wasn't For You" in which each of the villagers is given a verse to explain why they hate their neighbors and "Bread" a carbohydrate addict's anthem. Every song is clever and beautiful enough to make it understandable that The Baker's Wife has become a cult classic to theatergoers in the know.
Although director and Arden Theatre co-founder, Terrence J. Nolen pulled together a quirky and enjoyable company with strong on-stage chemistry, performances by the leading players in this production were too disparate to deliver the full impact of the story or the songs. Tom Teti (Aimable) so far out-performs both Sharon Sampieri (Genevieve) and Jeffrey Coon (Dominique) that it is difficult to see why Genevieve would prefer the not-smooth, perpetually leaning boy to her trusting, loving and loveable husband; or why Aimable would have anything to do with such a selfish, disloyal and moody little girl. One cannot help but be infected by Aimable's love for Genevieve when Teti sings "Merci, Madame."
On the contrary, Sampieri fails to elicit a reaction while singing one of the show's most poignant and most popular songs, "Meadowlark." In thinking about this production, another old maxim comes to mind -- something about throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
Just as The Baker's Wife may never make it into heavy high school drama rotation in spite of the high quality of Schwartz and Stein's work, the Arden Theatre's production may be marred but still well-worth seeing.
