Reviews

A Little Night Music

| New York City |

March 12, 2003

Jeremy Irons and Marc Kudischin A Little Night Music(Photo © Carol Rosegg)
Jeremy Irons and Marc Kudisch
in A Little Night Music
(Photo © Carol Rosegg)

Because Stephen Sondheim is considered such a master lyricist, his stunning accomplishments as a melody-maker have been underappreciated by a country mile. But it’s impossible to sit through the New York City Opera’s production
of A Little Night Music and not be mesmerized by the succession of propulsive, melting, plangent, mysterious melodies that Sondheim sends out over the auditorium in undulating waves. The tunes, all written in three-meters or multiples thereof and owing much to Mozart and Strauss and Lehar while commenting wryly on the work of those masters, achieve everything Sondheim intends them to. They succeed in establishing and illuminating character, and in capturing a sense of period while not being stuck in it.

In a Broadway venue, the focus is not usually so much on music as it is on lyrics — or, at least, it was thus in a now-vanishing time. The opposite is true of opera houses. Does this explain why the grace and power of Sondheim’s music seem so overwhelmingly present at City Opera? Or is it that 30 years on (A Little Night Music premiered in February 1973), it’s clear that the piece has earned its place in opera house repertory for the very reason that its score is surpassingly good, meeting opera standards and then some? Or is it that, according to the City Opera press office, there are 44 musicians in the pit — 18 more than Sondheim initially wanted and 20 more, according to genius orchestrator Jonathan Tunick, than he initially got? (This, of course, is 25 or 26 more musicians than the new minimum number established for the larger Broadway houses as a compromise that helped to end the musicians’ strike yesterday.)

Taking A Little Night Music as a whole, it may be Sondheim’s best show — along with Company, which also looks at married and single love/lust but in a more contemporary setting. Adapted with a knowing ear by Hugh Wheeler from Ingmar Bergman’s Smiles of a Summer Night film, it is surely Sondheim’s wisest show. In Follies (which also takes a jaundiced view of marriage) and Sweeney Todd (which wants to fry larger societal fish), the composer-lyricist and his various collaborators (Hal Prince chief among them) executed their work with such dramatic and literary brilliance that they almost disguised the inch-deep views espoused in those shows. But the manner in which Wheeler and Sondheim examine their characters’ foolishness — thanks, of course, to Bergman — is both smart and sympathetic. Their implied smiles, more forgiving than Sondheim’s usually are, constantly brighten the proceedings; they also imply deeper understanding and acceptance of human foibles.

Jeremy Irons and Juliet Stevenson in A Little Night Music(Photo © Carol Rosegg)
Jeremy Irons and Juliet Stevenson in A Little Night Music
(Photo © Carol Rosegg)

Lifting the roundelay of entangled lovers from Bergman’s film, Sondheim and Wheeler bring actress Desirée Armfeldt (Juliet Stevenson) into contact with former lover Fredrik Egerman (Jeremy Irons) when the latter pays a visit because he’s frustrated by the continued virginity of his young wife, Anne (Kristin Huxhold). Awkwardly, Fredrik and Desirée are discovered more or less in flagrante delicto by Desirée’s current lover, Count Carl-Magnus Malcolm (Marc Kudisch). The count’s wife, Charlotte (Michele Pawk) gets wind of the trysts and, seeking revenge, tattles to Anne. Desirée, with an agenda, invites all of the injured and swooning parties to the country home of her mother (Claire Bloom). Their shenanigans there are observed by Madame Armfeldt, Desirée’s young daughter, Fredrika (Anna Kendrick), and Anne’s maid, Petra (Jessica Boevers), all of whom have a clear-eyed understanding of amorous adventures that the other principals lack. Although this is a cynical comedy, it remains a comedy, and so everything comes out right in the end.

Sondheim’s delight in making the music to which the figures get themselves in and out of trouble is apparent from the very first note. He introduces five singers who, in turn, introduce musical themes that we will hear again and again, as well as narrative themes of love and lust and the confusion of the two. The composer scores high with the intertwined “Now,” “Soon” and “Later,” and with the tempo-changing “Miller’s Son.” That last item is boldly positioned immediately after “Send in the Clowns,” which is regularly logged as the tunesmith’s only pop song. Also deliciously witty are “You Must Meet My Wife” — perhaps the best conversation song ever written — and the Fredrik/Carl-Magnus duet “It Would Have Been Wonderful.” (Sondheim seems to like pitting fulsome baritones against one another, since he repeats that ploy with the same kind of satiric humor in Into the Woods.) Last but hardly least is the ruminative “Liaisons” — composed, as is much of the score, for a non-singer yet still rapturously melodious.

The glow of the piece is enhanced by director Scott Ellis, and by some choreography and dance-like movement by his frequent teammate Susan Stroman. Ellis put this production together for City Opera 10 years ago, not much more than adequately; now, he energizes Wheeler’s sometimes clunky script more than he was previously able to do, though there are still some pacing problems.

Marc Kudisch and Michele Pawk in A Little Night Music(Photo © Carol Rosegg)
Marc Kudisch and Michele Pawk in A Little Night Music
(Photo © Carol Rosegg)

Perhaps Ellis’s most important contribution to this revival is the cast he’s assembled. In Irons, Stevenson, and Bloom, he has at his disposal some of the most stylish English-speaking actors around today. All of them would undoubtedly admit instantly that they aren’t great singers, but what the hey! Sondheim doesn’t necessarily want great singers in these roles; he calls for actors who can sing passably, as these do, while emoting with gilt-edged finesse. The boudoir scene in which Stevenson trades quips with Irons is, in itself, worth the price of admission. Bloom, confined to a wheelchair and occasionally raising her voice excessively to fill the large house, gives “Liaisons” a pithy reading.

Plucking Marc Kudisch from Thoroughly Modern Millie, Michele Pawk from the recently closed Hollywood Arms, and Jessica Boevers from the just closed Oklahoma!, Ellis has surrounded his focal trio with Broadway voices. Huxhold and Gurwin, cute as buttons, also sing out lustily. Only opera-oriented quibblers could complain, though they shouldn’t, about the results. Lindsay W. Davis has dressed everyone in gorgeous costumes, and Michael Anania has given them pretty sets to play upon.
This production of A Little Night Music has a lot to recommend it.

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