Pictured: Rebecca Caine and Karl Hamilton in character. Photo by John Revisky.

Asolo Repertory Theatre prepares for another season in its signature style of rotating performance, adding the regional premiere of Living On Love to the season’s slate. A musical comedy from two-time Tony Award-winner Joe DiPietro, actors Rebecca Caine and Karl Hamilton star as aging opera diva Raquel and her equally egotistical conductor-husband Vito as they face the onslaught of age with wandering eyes and pointed wit. Asolo veteran Peter Amster directs.

“I remember opening to page one and starting to laugh,” said Amster, one of the first attached to the project. He was drawn by its odd nature, what he calls a cross between opera and high-level sitcom. A double-edged sword in that sense, the strength of the script presented its own challenge to any director—to translate its cerebral power to the stage. “It has to become visceral and have a human heart beating inside of it,” said Amster. The scripts, the jokes, the arc must be broken down and understood before being reconstituted “like orange juice” with the actors, who found their own fertile ground for experimentation.

“I love everything he’s done,” said Hamilton of writer DiPietro. “He has a great sense of writing comedy for the stage that works so well and I wanted to be a part of.” Whereas some scripts give actors comedy that they can work with, he said, “this makes me work. This excites me.” And so the actors experiment while Amster directs, observes and directs again. “He just tweaks the comedy slightly to the left or right,” said Caine of the process working with Amster, “and it drops into the right place. It’s brilliant comedy technique and fantastic to learn.”

“We basically laugh all day,” Caine continued, though she found herself drawn not only to the humor of the script but that truthful heart inside, the story about the strange truths of long-term relationships, mature love and artists and their egos. Amidst the laughter, there’s a certain pain in these characters made all the clearer, something that speaks to the greater human experience of aging and mortality. “It’s a horrible feeling when you have so much in you that you still want to express and you’re just hitting your stride and to have that taken away,” said Caine, and after a moment, laughing. “And the frocks were fantastic.”

That would be thanks to Robert Perdziola, scenic and costume designer for Living On Love and the one responsible for bringing all the beauty and flair of what Amster has dubbed “Hollywood Regency” to the production, outfitting sets and actors in appropriately dazzling adornment. “I’ve wanted to work with this man for 20 years,” said Amster. “His work is stunning beyond belief.”

See it all—the work of Amster, Caine, Hamilton and Perdziola—when Living On Love opens Jan. 15 at the Asolo Rep.

Pictured: Rebecca Caine and Karl Hamilton in character. Photo by John Revisky.