Oh, yes. It's really . . . special.

You know when a friend raves about something, and you just don’t care for? And when it gets beyond raving and not caring for? And you try to be delicate. You try to be supportive. But inside you’re just going “blech”? But if they really truly are over the moon, you bite your tongue, and think of something nice to say. Oh, don't look at me like that. We've all done it.

That’s the way I’m feeling about my beloved Theatre 3 and their inexplicable adoration of Light in the Piazza. I went to see their production in November. And I was deathly silent on the topic. Because, everybody else I know who has seen the show adores it. Thinks it is beyond romance. The story. The music. And T3 itself seems to be really over the moon. They extended the run. They send out bubbly e-mails about it. They are gaga for the Piazza. I’m more eeee-gaga. That show just hits my gag reflex.

If you’re not familiar, it’s the story of an American mother and daughter on vacation in Italy in the '50s. Daughter meets cute an Italian boy and they fall in love. Molto romantico. The wrinkle? The daughter got kicked in the head by a horse as a child (yep, kicked in the head by a horse) and she’s a little slow. The boy and his family don’t notice because evidently all Americans sound a little slow to them. So the mother then has to decide whether to let her daughter follow her heart. Oh, and did I mention that the girl has a tiny bit of an anger management problem as a result of her little accident? Little bit. Ain’t that a kick in the head. So romantic.

Oh, and by the way, the mother never does get around to telling the boy’s parents that their sweet new daughter-in-law has the mentality of an 8-year old. I kept thinking, “Well intentioned family who basically tricks a man into marrying a potentially unstable woman. Isn’t that how Mr. Rochester ended up with a crazy woman locked in the attic of his house? Then she burned the house down?” I really, really tried to see it as romantic. But all I could see was a marriage beginning on a lie. A really, really BIG lie. That could go horribly, painfully, catastrophically wrong leaving nothing but agony for anyone involved. I can’t even think of this as morally ambiguous. It’s just wrong.

But Theatre 3 keeps sending me e-mails about this wonderful, charming, heart warming, funny play that no one in their right mind should miss.

Mm. Yeah.