Love, Longing And Loss

"I don't like feeling sorry for myself. That's not who I am. And most of the time I don't feel that way. Instead, I am grateful for having at least found you. We could have flashed by one another like two pieces of cosmic dust.

But, I am, after all, a man. And all the philosophic rationalizations I can conjure up do not keep me from wanting you, every day, every moment, the merciless wail of time, of time I can never spend with you, deep within my head.

I love you, profoundly and completely. And I always will."

When Robert James Waller's "The Bridges of Madison County" was released in 1992, it flew off the shelves -- and from the hands of one woman to another. It was a romantic anthem not unlike "Romeo and Juliet" -- boy meets girl, they fall in love, the cruel hand of fate separates them. But something was unique about the tale of Francesca Johnson and Robert Kincaid: They weren't teenagers. They were full-fledged, fully responsible adults -- and it was those adult responsibilities that tore them apart.

Clint Eastwood and Meryl Streep turned the novel into a movie in 1995. Mothers and daughters, sisters and best friends cried some more. And through both, men remained bemused, puzzled by how a tale of infidelity could resonate so strongly.

Andrew Samonsky didn't know much about the book or the movie when he auditioned for the role of Robert in the touring production of Jason Robert Brown's musical "The Bridges of Madison County."

"The only thing I had seen was the Broadway production," the actor says. "It's very rare that I see a show and let myself go, 'Oh, wow, I'd love to do that,' so obviously it's very gratifying to have been cast.

"The movie isn't really the book -- they definitely have some differences -- and it's the same with the musical version," he says. "It's not just putting the movie on stage. Our book writer, [Pulitzer Prize winner] Marsha Norman, definitely added her twist to it. You see more of the neighbors, more of the family. The whole show takes place in one time period, with no flash forwards to the children. It's still obviously the same basic plot line, but it allows us as the actors not to feel any kind of pressure or need to re-create the movie."

What hasn't changed, Samonsky says, is the passion -- both that between the characters and that the audiences feel for the story.

"You can tell everyone is loving it. It's nice to be in a show that is so well-received and so moving to a lot of people," he says.

"I like to say I get to fall in love and get my heart shattered every night, which can be a tumultuous emotional journey," he goes on. "It's very gratifying as an artist, but it definitely wears on you. As an actor, you've got to pull from your own experience. I'm very lucky to be in a relationship that I feel is as deep and as powerful as what I think Robert is experiencing -- and believe me, I realize how lucky I am to say that personally. It allows me to connect with my character in that sense."

More than halfway through the tour, Samonsky is still musing about happy endings and unhappy endings and love and loss.

"We ask some big questions in the end. Francesca makes her decision. The question is, did she make the right decision? Why? What is a 'right decision'? What is love? That's the big question for Francesca's character -- as it is for mine.

"Should my character have pursued what he pursued? That's the moral dilemma. But their love is something much bigger than the two of them. I love the show because it can have a reputation of just being this typical romance. But I really think it's a lot more than that. It deals with this touchy subject in a beautiful way.

"I think I can understand what it would be like to lose someone you have that strong a connection with."

"In a universe of ambiguity, this kind of certainty comes only once, and never again, no matter how many lifetimes you live."

NAN What's Up on 04/15/2016