Giulia: The Poison Queen of Palermo, the new musical now playing downtown at the Perelman Performing Arts Center, is a patchwork quilt of other musicals: one swatch a revenge plot like the one in Sweeney Todd, another the villainous husbands like the one in Waitress, a patch of go-go heroines like the duo in Wicked, another of rap riffs like those in Hamilton.
Maybe that’s why the critical response has been so all over the place for this show, with many of those who say they admire it nitpicking its weak points and making unfavorable comparisons to those other shows even though this one is a first-time effort, written entirely by Jennifer Nettles, the singer-songwriter who made her name as half of the Grammy-winning country duo Sugarland (click here to read more about her).
And for some reason that critical waffling has made me defensive about this show. It's not perfect. But I liked it. I liked it a lot. And I think if they can see it, a lot of other folks would like it too. Nettles, who also stars in the title role, has based her debut musical on the tale of Giulia Tofana, a 17th century female apothecary who, according to legend, concocted a largely undetectable poison that she sold to women seeking to get rid of unwanted husbands, eventually leading to the deaths of some 600 of them.
In Nettles’ telling of the story, Giulia first poisons her own husband after he attempts to abuse their daughter. When the word gets around, other beleaguered women start asking for similar help. Giulia complies even though she worries, as she sings in one number, that doing something wrong for the right reason may not make it right. And she knows that if the authorities find out what she’s doing, they will label her a witch and make her pay the ultimate price for her crimes.
Director Mary Zimmerman, still best-known for her 2002 production Metamorphoses, has staged Giulia’s story with elegant simplicity: whenever a trio of doors at the back of the stage open they reveal different scenarios that provide sometimes literal and sometimes metaphorical settings for what’s going on in front of them.
Meanwhile, the cast sings the hell out of a wide-ranging score that includes power ballads, comic numbers, choral anthems and raps, all of which move the plot along. And several of them give individual cast members chances to shine. The second-act solo “The Wolf” that Quentin Earl Darrington sings as a hypocritical cardinal is an out-and-out showstopper.
Still, the word that many of the critical naysayers—mainly men—keep using to describe the show is "earnest". But what’s wrong with being passionate and purposeful? Sure, the male villains—Darrington’s churchman and a smarmy politician played with almost a touch too much relish by Christopher M. Ramirez —would be right at home in any 19th century melodrama but is the critics' real issue that this is an unabashedly feminist tale? I mean who objects to the earnestness of Benjamin Barker or Jean Valjean?
Nettles who has appeared briefly in such shows as Chicago (I know, who hasn’t) and Waitress, is not only comfortable onstage and has an incredible voice but is also unafraid to put the focus on women and the unvarnished rage they felt back in the 17th century when women had so few rights or ways to protect themselves and today when such rights as controlling our own bodies to serving in the military are being severely threatened. And I'm glad she's doing it regardless of how uncomfortable it might make some men feel.
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