A ROOM WITH A VIEW

THE NEW ROMANTIC MUSICAL COMEDY

BOOK BY MARC ACITO
MUSIC & LYRICS BY JEFFREY STOCK

Based on the novel by E.M. Forster

A ROOM WITH A VIEW, the new musical based on E.M. Forster’s beloved novel, is both social satire and wicked comedy -- but above all, it is one of the classic love stories of all time. Amid the golden sunlight and violet-covered hills of Tuscany, sheltered English country girl Lucy Honeychurch encounters freethinking George Emerson and their lives are changed forever.
The year is 1908, and Lucy is on tour in Florence with her prim spinster cousin Charlotte Bartlett. Lucy is keen to educate herself about the finer things so as to be a proper wife to Cecil Vyse, her urbane, cultured fiancé from London. But Lucy's restless spirit keeps breaking through the surface – especially when she plays Beethoven sonatas furiously on the piano.
Staying at the same hotel with Lucy and Charlotte is young George, a railroad employee on holiday with his ailing father. In fact, the hotel is full of eccentric Brits, including the stuffy, fatuous Reverend Beeber, the excitable “lady- novelist” Miss Lavish, and George’s father Mr. Emerson, a dyed-in-the-wool socialist and gentle humanist who frets about his moody, pensive son. He sees the connection between George and Lucy even before they do.
A frightening experience shared in a piazza; a stolen kiss on a hillside in the rain... Lucy cannot seem to stop the momentum of this dangerous romance with George. But once back in Surrey, Lucy throws herself with renewed fervor into the preparations for her wedding to Cecil Vyse. Cecil is sophisticated and wealthy. He is also a prig and a snob. Will Lucy yield to Edwardian convention and pursue everything she thought she wanted – or will she follow her true heart and risk losing everything she has ever known?
The delight lies in how the characters arrive at their destinations, and how the words and music bring Forster’s story –its wit and heart – gloriously to life.

LISTEN

While buying postcards in a piazza in Florence, Lucy witnesses a murder. George happens to be standing nearby, and when she faints, he catches her. When Lucy awakens, she is mortified and wants only to forget the murder ever happened. But George, who has been quiet and melancholy since his mother's recent death, feels suddenly, strangely alive. Witnessing a death has stirred him, and also made him feel bonded with Lucy.

Lucy is late returning to the hotel in Florence. Charlotte’s preoccupation is that no impropriety should jeopardize Lucy’s impending matrimony with Cecil. Charlotte is convinced that if anything goes wrong, it will be her own fault. Underlying her self-flagellation is actually a self-aggrandizement about her role in Lucy’s life.

 While Lucy is touring Europe, her fiancé Cecil Vyse is sending letters from Rome. He is stuffy and self-serious, writing epistles he considers romantic, but somehow manage to glorify himself above the object of desire.

Worried that George is getting too close to Lucy, Charlotte concocts an excuse to take her cousin to the countryside for the day. She enlists Reverend Beeber to lead the tour. Miss Lavish overhears the plans and invites herself along, then takes the liberty of inviting George and his father. George is happy for the opportunity to get closer to Lucy, but most of the others would rather be anywhere than stuck together all day. The bellhop of the hotel, accompanied by his girlfriend, drives the horses.

Civility breaks down in the carriage, and bickering and backbiting ensue. The Italian driver sings an aria about the necessity of seizing the moment. He instinctively reaches out to connect with Lucy. He senses she is holding back her heart. He admonishes, “Do no fight the spring.”

Lucy wanders away from the picnic and stumbles upon George daydreaming on a violet-covered hillside. What begins as an awkward chat about impending wet weather eventually disarms Lucy, and soon she is sharing a passionate kiss with George – until they are discovered by Charlotte. And nothing will ever be the same. As Act One comes to a close, George is left alone, gloriously drenched in the pouring rain.

Back in England, Lucy is trying to forget about George Emerson and the kiss he stole in the field of violets. She is engaged to the elegant and refined yet priggish Cecil Vyse. Cecil comes up from London to visit Lucy’s small-town home three days before their wedding. He has little patience for the local country folk or their middle-class ways.

Through a series of coincidences, the Emersons have rented a cottage in Lucy’s hometown of Windy Corner in Surrey. Reverend Beeber, who lives next door at the rectory, introduces George Emerson to Lucy’s brother Freddy, and the two young men become fast friends. As the Emersons unpack, a gramophone plays a recording of the new American ragtime song, “Splash.” The scene later shifts to an idyllic pond in the woods nearby, where Freddy and George end up frolicking naked in the water, along with the usually buttoned-up reverend.

Lucy is to be married to Cecil the following day. George barges into the living room of Windy Corner to make one final plea to Lucy. He has nothing left to lose now. He tries to show her she is making a mistake and that he – only he – truly knows her, body and soul. Lucy can hardly bear to hear these heartfelt truths and her world is shaken, as George at last leaves nothing unsaid.

Overcome with emotion, Lucy smashes a vase full of flowers. George leaves, crestfallen, and Lucy is left picking up the pieces of the vase, trying to restore order to her life and to her chaotic heart. In the end she tries to negotiate a compromise in which she finally admits to herself that she has always loved George, but she rationalizes why their love is impossible.