#1
Posted: 9/29/10 at 1:25am
Saw them tonight. Bernadette is, as always, a revelation. She wrings nuance out of each line and sings and acts a rendition of "Clowns" that is doubly etched in loss and pain: the pain of Desiree's losses and the pain of her own.
Elaine gives a performance that is oddly, shockingly, deliberately odd. She turns "Liaisons" into a sad number, filled with the kind of rue and regret that actresses usually find in Desiree and Charlotte. As Reginald Tresilian said, "Who would have thought that anyone would make you cry at the end of 'Liaisons,' least of all Elaine Stritch?" But in the end, she is no more right for Madame Armfeldt than Angela was: two great actresses, in the waning years of their long careers, playing a great role and missing entirely its essential characteristic.
Trevor Nunn's direction, on re-examination, is worse than before. The man who has created such brilliance in his life in the theater just doesn't get what makes Night Music perfect. The actors overact and over-emote and misplay key elements in ways that can only be attributed to a director who doesn't "trust" the material.
His instincts and choices--from the incompetent staging of the opening number (which should be thrilling!) and the "Soon"/"Now"/"Later" trio (which should be awe-inspiring), through the flat-and-boring "Weekend in the County" (which should be pulse-racing), through the complete misunderstanding of the lyrics sung by the Lieder Singers about "Perpetual Sunset" and "The Sun Won't Set," down to that contemptible directorial notion of make the dinner party a picnic, down to the ugly sets and costumes and the stupid misunderstanding of "The Miller's Son"--all his choices are wrong, wrong, wrong.
He directs Night Music like a first-time high-school-student director who has always hated musicals and thinks he has a way to do them better.
But if you haven't seen Bernadette and Elaine together at last, go! To paraphrase Hamlet, "When shall we see their like, together, again?
Elaine gives a performance that is oddly, shockingly, deliberately odd. She turns "Liaisons" into a sad number, filled with the kind of rue and regret that actresses usually find in Desiree and Charlotte. As Reginald Tresilian said, "Who would have thought that anyone would make you cry at the end of 'Liaisons,' least of all Elaine Stritch?" But in the end, she is no more right for Madame Armfeldt than Angela was: two great actresses, in the waning years of their long careers, playing a great role and missing entirely its essential characteristic.
Trevor Nunn's direction, on re-examination, is worse than before. The man who has created such brilliance in his life in the theater just doesn't get what makes Night Music perfect. The actors overact and over-emote and misplay key elements in ways that can only be attributed to a director who doesn't "trust" the material.
His instincts and choices--from the incompetent staging of the opening number (which should be thrilling!) and the "Soon"/"Now"/"Later" trio (which should be awe-inspiring), through the flat-and-boring "Weekend in the County" (which should be pulse-racing), through the complete misunderstanding of the lyrics sung by the Lieder Singers about "Perpetual Sunset" and "The Sun Won't Set," down to that contemptible directorial notion of make the dinner party a picnic, down to the ugly sets and costumes and the stupid misunderstanding of "The Miller's Son"--all his choices are wrong, wrong, wrong.
He directs Night Music like a first-time high-school-student director who has always hated musicals and thinks he has a way to do them better.
But if you haven't seen Bernadette and Elaine together at last, go! To paraphrase Hamlet, "When shall we see their like, together, again?
Updated On: 9/29/10 at 01:25 AM
) and his passion for the art is remarkable. He is someone to engage with, not fight against. 
