By SHARON EBERSON
To be clear, this isn’t a review. To have a world premiere of a full-length musical in front of a Pittsburgh audience, presented by Pittsburgh CLO and populated with top-notch talent – from Broadway, regional productions and inside the Cultural District – is both an event and an opportunity.
(Image: Matt Polk)
The official opening of Madame Clicquot: A Revolutionary Musical is tonight – Friday, May 30, 2025. Thursday’s performance was a preview, with Pittsburgh CLO executive producer Mark Fleischer and director-producer Laurie Glodowski preceding the show by asking for audience feedback.
With songs and a book by Lisette Glodowski and Richard C. Walker, Madame Clicquot has been in the works for quite some time, including a 2021 concert version. An industry reading in October of last year boasted much of the cast seen here in Pittsburgh: leading lady Victoria Frings (Broadway’s An Enemy of the People) as Barbe-Nicole Ponsardin, Paolo Montalban (Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella) as Louis Bohne, Kai An Chee as Geneviéve, Jonathan Christopher (Sweeney Todd) as Jean-Remy Moët and Nick Laughlin as Napoleon Bonaparte.
in the premiere of Madame Clicquot: A Revolutionary Musical.
(Image: Matt Polk for Pittsburgh CLO)
Steve Blanchard (Nicolas Ponsardin) and Penn State alum Christian Thompson (François Clicquot) were joined by, among other Pittsburgh performers, Joseph Domencic as Madame Clicquot’s understanding father-in-law, and Kylie Edwards, as her flighty sister Clémentine.
The aesthetics lighting up the Byham Theater backdrops were revelatory, from the Revolution to a couture dress shop to a storm at sea. Video designer Mark Ciglar, founder and CEO of Cinevative, a leading producer of on-screen media for performing arts and live entertainment, working with Pittsburgh-based scenic designer Holly M. Breuer and lighting designer Paul Miller, give the show a depth and breadth far beyond the stage, to go with Broadway-caliber voices and an orchestra led by Kenneth Gartman.
Colorful period costumes with multiple changes for some characters are by longtime Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre designer Jane Campbell, who had a cast of more than 30 to outfit. Those included Mariana Mangual as young Barbe-Nicole. A junior at Seton LaSalle High School, Mariana recently won Outstanding Actress at the 2025 Gene Kelly Awards.
A highlight in the second act is a rousing dance number, with invading Russian troops enjoying Clicquot Champagne, that includes Alex Hladio, in partnership with The Tamburitzans.
The early-to-midlife of the real Barbe-Nicole Ponsardin Clicquot is told in epic fashion, and to her, we take a bow for the gold standard that we know today as Veuve Clicquot Champagne. Hers is the revolutionary and entrepreneurial can-do spirit that survived the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars, plus the loss of a great love, to become the woman who revolutionized the process of creating the great occasion drink that we know today.
Facing gender discrimination throughout her life, the real-life Madame Clicquot invented the process by which champagne is clarified and led her husband‘s business through wartime to become one of the great Champagne houses that to this day is an award winning brand.
Frings brings power and vulnerability, both as an actor and singer, to the role she originated. Standouts include Christopher as the villainous rival Moët, who helped bring the Champagne house of Moët et Chandon to international prominence by undermining the Clicquots at every turn. Who knew?
Laughlin has a ball as a cartoonish Napoleon, a combination of Nero and Hamilton‘s King George, who drinks and drinks some more while trying to conquer the world, and Madame Clicquot desperately tries to save the business begun with her husband and the loyal distributor Louis Bohne.
(Image: Matt Polk)
Entering well into the first act of the musical, Montalban’s Bohne was greeted by cheers from an audience that obviously recalls his role as the Prince opposite Brandy as Cinderella and Whitney Houston as the Fairy Godmother in the 1997 Disney TV film.
I have once before attended a preview night before an opening, also courtesy of Pittsburgh CLO – for Broadway’s An American in Paris. It’s a mostly friends, family and valued patrons performance, and there’s a certain electricity in the air that goes beyond the excitement of being among the first to witness something new.
There’s also the recognition of potential and imagining next steps, with hope for the future, all things Madame Clicquot herself possessed in abundance.
TICKETS AND DETAILS
Pittsburgh CLO’s stand-alone engagement of Madame Clicquot at the Byham Theater, runs through June 8, 2025, is made possible through enhancement funding by commercial producer 42nd Parallel Productions. Tickets: https://pittsburghclo.culturaldistrict.org/production/100289. Note: For the pronunciation of “Clicquot,” check out a Pittsburgh CLO cast video here.
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