Loan Dang
Two people raising wine glasses for a toast.
Kevin Blakeslee, left, and Sarah Blakeslee in "The Bridges of Madison County," Music Theatre of Madison, 2025.
With its current production, Music Theatre of Madison takes on one of Broadway’s slipperiest love stories, Jason Robert Brown’s The Bridges of Madison County, inspired by Robert James Waller's 1992 novel of the same name. This is a musical that can resist vitality even in earnest hands.
Set in Iowa in 1965, the story is a simple one: Francesca Johnson, an Italian war bride, stays behind while her husband and children head to the State Fair. When Robert Kincaid, a wandering National Geographic photographer, pulls into her driveway looking for directions, a four-day affair begins — one that forces Francesca to weigh desire against duty, the chance of escape against the family she’s built. Around their love story hums a small-town chorus: the watchful neighbors Marge and Charlie, Marian and Chiara with their lyrical warmth, the ensemble of townsfolk and friends filling in the landscape.
Brown’s score — honored with Tony Awards for both its orchestrations and original music — is full of longing, folk sweetness, and sweeping arcs. But the music’s expansiveness sits awkwardly in the Play Circle. The sound is overamplified, the space too tight. This is writing that asks for air, for distance, for voices that can slip easily from conversational intimacy into operatic surge. Without that elasticity, the music swells but doesn't quite breathe.
At the center are Sarah and Kevin Blakeslee, a married couple playing Francesca and Robert. Their real-life connection gives the affair a believable spark; when they lean into each other, the chemistry feels true. Kevin’s baritone carries warmth and urgency, though he sometimes tips into shouting when the score demands power. Sarah faces the greater test. Francesca’s music shifts constantly, from folk lullaby to near-opera. In the gentler passages, she finds grace and tenderness. But when the lines stretch higher and heavier, the writing shows little mercy, and her voice often strains against it. Even her accent, slipping in and out, adds another distraction.
Elsewhere, the cast gives the evening its strongest lift. Cat Richmond sings with an ease that seems to float above the room, her voice the clearest evidence of how Brown’s music can soar when given full support. Micah Friedman’s singing has a similar clarity and punch, the kind of power that seems meant for a much larger house. And in the smaller roles of the nosy neighbors, Jen Ward Lennon and Bart Terrell bring honesty and grounding. Too often these parts are played for caricature; here, they land with warmth and humor, the kind of work that makes you wish the show offers them more stage time.
Meghan Randolph’s direction leans into the musical’s tension, but Bridges itself is caught in an awkward middle ground — too big for the box, too intimate for the epic frame. What should feel like an endless Iowa sky feels compressed, and what should have been whispered confessions sometimes blare through the speakers.
The production, though well-intentioned, never settles into the sweeping romance it promises. There are moments when it all clicks: Richmond’s ease, Friedman’s power, Lennon and Terrell’s grounded humor and these sparks remind us why Music Theatre of Madison’s risks matter, even when the payoff is uneven.
The show continues at the Play Circle with performances on Aug. 17, 21, 22, and 23.
