Love Affair: A New Musical Brings Something Special to Legacy Theater

Where you witness an event matters.

Seeing a baseball game at Fenway Park is not the same, even if the teams are identical, as watching a game at Citi Field in New York.

Where you see a play matters as well. The stage, the production capabilities, the intimacy or grandeur of the site, can impact the experience of watching a production.

With the Legacy Theater in Branford, the size of the stage can be a factor that either adds intimacy or feels constraining, and various productions have tilted to one side or the other.

But Love Affair: A New Musical does something many previous shows have fallen just short of perfecting, at least to this degree: it fits. Amazingly well.

The writing, size of the cast, musical numbers, and overall production bring many aspects of larger scale musicals and scales it down to one of the best shows I have seen at the former puppet theater in Stony Creek.

And yet as the show went along, enthralling as it was, I had to ask myself if this show could be expanded, the sets larger, the cast grown, the musical numbers adjusted to fit a larger scale and more grandiose stage. And the answer was a resounding yes.

And in that, we may see the true value of Legacy, helping bring shows to light that can grow much larger.

Love Affair: A New Musical is based on the 1939 film of the same name that would also later inspire An Affair to Remember. The music and lyrics by Joe Simeone are crisp, foot tap-worthy and plentiful; the second half opens with back-to-back-to-back excellent numbers, led by “Countin Down the Holidays to You.”

The pace moves well, especially needed for a story so many already know well. No scene lingers, and the transitions are quick, keeping your focus fixated on the stage.

Both lead actors, Michelle Aravena, whose Broadway credits include Beetlejuice, A Bronx Tale, Rocky, Jersey Boys, Michael Starr, with both stage and screen credentials, are excellent, but the breakout performance is Emily Steinhardt as Phyllis Knoeffler, who stole the stage every scene she was in, and has the highlight song of the evening.

If I’m listing the top shows I have seen at Legacy, Love Affair: A New Musical would find itself near the top. This is what we hoped for when the first stages of the Legacy Theater renovation were announced: original works offering fresh takes on familiar stories, top level actors bringing it to life; well written, memorable songs that linger in the mind even as one leaves the theater and the sense that you may just be one the first to see an original work of something truly special that has legs far beyond our little town.

Love Affair: A New Musical is co-directed by Joseph J. Simeone and Matthew Couvillon and runs at Legacy through August 25.