Renée Fleming Plays Against Type in ‘Living on Love’
Ben BrantleyApril 20, 2015: Making her Broadway debut in “Living on Love,” the lumpy little comedy that opened on Monday night at the Longacre Theater, Renée Fleming seems like far too nice a woman to be playing a diva. That sounds irrational, I know, since Ms. Fleming, the great soprano, is one of the most celebrated opera stars in the world. But “diva,” in that case, is a job description and a tribute to the professional heights to which Ms. Fleming has ascended. In “Living on Love,” which is written by Joe DiPietro and directed by Kathleen Marshall, Ms. Fleming is required to be a diva in the more pejorative sense, as when you call somebody out for melodramatic or selfish behavior by saying, “Oh, don’t be such a diva.” Raquel De Angelis, the opera star portrayed here by Ms. Fleming, is such a diva and then some — a capricious, tantrum-throwing egomaniac who doesn’t even step into her own living room without making sure she has the proper lighting, entrance music and drop-dead outfit. Ms. Fleming, who knows from ball gowns, wears such attire with grace. The accompanying attitude, however, isn’t a natural fit. And when someone says Raquel reminds him of Eleanor Roosevelt (albeit a beautiful and sensual version of that redoubtable first lady), the description isn’t as incongruous as intended.
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