Much has happened in the four years since Ariana DeBose starred as Anita in Steven Spielberg’s “West Side Story,” then won an Academy Award for it: film and television roles, three consecutive turns as the Tony Awards host — the last time, in 2024, she even added producing and choreography to her duties.
What had been missing since that new stardom was a bona fide run on a New York stage, the place where she had earned her chops in shows like “Hamilton” and “Summer.” That DeBose chose a revival of “The Baker’s Wife” at the intimate Classic Stage Company in the East Village was a smart move. A risky one, too.
Smart because the score is by Stephen Schwartz, whose résumé includes “Wicked,” “Pippin” and “The Queen of Versailles,” and features some of his most delicate melodies. And even though DeBose plays the title character, Geneviève, she is very much part of an ensemble, easing the pressure on her. Potentially hazardous because “The Baker’s Wife,” which never reached Broadway after a tortuous tryout period in 1976 that included a still-unknown Patti LuPone, has acquired such a cult following among aficionados that a new production comes with heightened expectations.
Based on a 1938 film by Marcel Pagnol, itself inspired by a Jean Giono story, the show is set in a Provençal village in the mid-1930s. Schwartz and the book writer, Joseph Stein (“Fiddler on the Roof”), generously spread the songs and narrative among the inhabitants, including Aimable (a superlative Scott Bakula), the long-awaited new baker and Geneviève’s much older spouse.
A well-cast troupe is essential since Geneviève disappears for much of Act II after running away with the age-appropriate handyman Dominique (Kevin William Paul). Aimable is so distraught that he stops baking, and the neighbors put aside their disagreements to find his wife and end the tragic baguette crisis.
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