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Years In Making, Her 'Tale' Hits Stage

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By JAY HANDELMAN Sarasota Herald Tribune

Published: October 11, 2007

SARASOTA - Ronald Reagan was in his first term as president and Jill Santoriello was still in high school when she started writing songs inspired by Charles Dickens' 'A Tale of Two Cities.'

That was after she gave up on 'Wuthering Heights' as too depressing.

What started as a hobby became an obsession. All that emotional drama about love and redemption kept drawing her back to write a full score, lyrics and the book for a show, even as she worked full-time jobs, most recently in programming for the Showtime pay-TV network.

These are clearly the best of times for Santoriello. Her patience is about to be rewarded in a far bigger way than she first imagined as the first fully staged production of her show begins previews Saturday at the Asolo Repertory Theatre.

'It's sort of surreal after all this time,' she said last week during a brief break from rehearsals.

The production, a joint venture between the Asolo and producers Barbara Russell and Ron Sharpe, is billed as a pre-Broadway engagement. A team of Broadway veterans onstage, including actors James Barbour, Natalie Toro, Nick Wyman and Santoriello's brother, Alex, is involved in the project. It's being staged by Michael Donald Edwards, the Asolo's producing artistic director.

They are going to provide Santoriello with an unforgettable 42nd birthday, which happens to be Oct. 26, the first of two official opening nights for the show at the Asolo.

Even as she pursued a full-time career in program development at Showtime, Santoriello kept coming back to the Dickens story, which she first read in high school in New Jersey at her mother's suggestion.

'I read it, and I cried my eyes out. It affected me so much, and I realized I found it something I could get excited about,' she said. 'It was that message about redemption and people having the power to change themselves, change the world, for good or evil, and the choice inherent in that.'

She continued working on the idea while earning a journalism degree at Ohio University but never consciously thought the book would make a great musical.

'One day, I wrote a song, and I wasn't necessarily planning to take on the whole thing or write the whole show, but I would be inspired by something I read in there.'

One song became three and then five.

The book is set in London and Paris in the late 18th century with the French Revolution as a backdrop. Santoriello focuses on a love triangle involving a cynical Englishman, Sydney Carton; a French aristocrat, Charles Darnay; and a young Englishwoman, Lucy Manette, who is reunited with a father she never knew after he was imprisoned for 17 years.

It was Santoriello's music that first grabbed the attention of Russell and Sharpe.

'We know a lot of people who write a show every year and put one good song in each show. Jill has written one show over a long period of time, and every single song is wonderful,' Sharpe said.

One of those songs, 'If Dreams Came True,' was a finalist in a 1996 International Musical Theater Conference competition in Denmark.

The producers met Santoriello through her older brother, Alex, who originated roles in several Broadway musicals. The emotion Jill Santoriello found in the characters has apparently transfixed everyone involved in the show.

'The music got me first,' Edwards said. 'It moved me. It touched me. I have to have that happen before I get involved in a project like this. It's a visceral experience when music affects you like that.'

ON STAGE

A Tale of Two Cities

WHEN: Oct. 26 through Nov. 18; previews Saturday through Oct. 25

WHERE: Asolo Repertory Theatre, FSU Center for the Performing Arts, 5555 N. Tamiami Trail, Sarasota

TICKETS: $18 to $56; (941) 351-8000, asolo.org

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