#1
The Meneier CVhololate Factory's production of 'a Little Night Music' has opened on Broadway with Catherine Zeta-Jones and Angela Lansbury.
The first reviews coming in are saying that the Menier as done it yet again.
Maybe this time next year we'll be reading the reviews for their current hit, 'Sweet Charity' as it too conquers Broadway.
Of course we have 'La Cage' to come before that!
******************************************************
Variety.
by David Rooney
A Tom Viertel, Steven Baruch, Marc Routh, Richard Frankel, Menier Chocolate
Factory, Roger Berlind, David Babani, Sonia Friedman Prods., Andrew Fell,
Daryl Roth/Jane Bergere, Harvey Weinstein/Raise the Roof 3, Beverly
Bartner/Dancap Prods., Nica Burns/Max Weitzenhoffer, Eric Falkenstein/Anna
Czekaj, Jerry Frankel/Ronald Frankel, James D. Stern/Douglas L. Meyer
presentation of a musical in two acts with music and lyrics by Stephen
Sondheim, book by Hugh Wheeler, suggested by the Ingmar Bergman film "Smiles
of a Summer Night." Directed by Trevor Nunn. Music direction, Tom Murray.
Choreography, Lynne Page.
Desiree Armfeldt - Catherine Zeta-Jones
Mme. Armfeldt - Angela Lansbury
Fredrik Egerman - Alexander Hanson
Count Carl-Magnus Malcolm - Aaron Lazar
Countess Charlotte Malcolm - Erin Davie
Petra - Leigh Ann Larkin
Henrik Egerman - Hunter Ryan Herdlicka
Anne Egerman - Ramona Mallory
The most atypical of Ingmar Bergman's celebrated films, "Smiles of a Summer
Night" brought ripe carnality and a delicious sense of irony to its
fin-de-siecle gathering of romantically muddled Swedes. Those same
intoxicating elements were translated to "A Little Night Music," Stephen
Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler's exquisite waltz-musical inspired by the film.
Reviving the 1973 show, director Trevor Nunn brings a blunt, heavy hand
where a glissando touch is required, but the wit and sophistication of the
material are sufficient to withstand even this phlegmatic staging. A handful
of magnetic leads provides further insurance against the uneven production.
At the center of that bright cluster is the luminous Catherine Zeta-Jones,
making her Broadway debut as fading actress and inveterate maneater Desiree
Armfeldt. Bewitching, confident and utterly natural, she breathes a
refreshing earthiness and warm-blooded sensuality into the part, even if
she's directed -- in one of the most tiresome traits of Nunn's production --
to underline every suggestion of sexual innuendo in Wheeler's book.
Vulnerability comes late to the performance, but it arrives in Zeta-Jones'
rueful "Send in the Clowns." Some may take issue with the song being played
more as bitter sorrow than self-deprecating introspection. But her handling
of it lends touching dignity to the defeat of a woman who has hitched her
plan for a new life to a man stuck in a misguided infatuation with someone
else.
Zeta-Jones is the star attraction, and she's mesmerizing enough to explain
why men would duel for Desiree's love. But the production's real jewel is
Angela Lansbury as her worldly mother.
The actress has sparkled in plays in recent seasons, but seeing her in a
Sondheim musical is something quite special. Regally coiffed and outfitted,
and with a strength of character undiminished even in the wheelchair she
occupies for much of her stage time, her Mme. Armfeldt can inject tart
flavor into a simple "La la la."
In a musical laced with the delicate shadows of memory, she is the principal
conjurer of remembrances past. Her song "Liaisons" vividly recollects Mme.
Armfeldt's trysts with counts and kings, draped in equal parts melancholy,
humor, conceit and jaded wisdom. She even confronts the beckoning hand of
her mortality with tenacity, raising her glass in a toast, "To death!" It's
a marvelous role, and Lansbury's sublime performance in it alone makes this
production unmissable.
There's also a lovely three-generational throughline completed by the
charming Keaton Whittaker's preternaturally intelligent Fredricka, who
figures as Puck in this Scandinavian "Midsummer Night's Dream."
Observing and intervening in the tangled relationships of the adults
waltzing around her in perpetual twilight, she hungrily soaks up lessons on
life, love and dental care from her grandmother. She also proves a complicit
aid when her mostly absentee mother, Desiree, descends on Mme. Armfeldt's
estate on a romantic mission. (Whittaker alternates in the role with
Katherine Leigh Doherty.)
Desiree's plan is to secure the affections of former lover Fredrik Egerman
(Alexander Hanson), a lawyer whose child-bride, Anne (Ramona Mallory),
remains a virgin almost a year into their marriage. Tagging along with them
for "A Weekend in the Country" is Fredrik's son by his first marriage,
Henrik (Hunter Ryan Herdlicka). The gloomy theology student also carries a
torch for Anne, taking out his sexual frustration on his cello or, with less
success, on frisky maid Petra (Leigh Ann Larkin).
Jealous that Fredrik's reappearance in her life has quenched Desiree's
appetite for him, her lover Count Carl-Magnus Malcolm (Aaron Lazar) also
arrives uninvited at the estate, with long-suffering wife Charlotte (Erin
Davie) in tow.
Nunn signals his mechanical grasp of this plot of amorous intrigues past,
present and future in a ghostly opening, with the choral quintet bumping
about in Hartley T.A. Kemp's half-light against designer David Farley's
spare set of mottled, mirrored walls. The atmosphere is unmistakably one of
dusty gentility, but visually, it's dour and uninteresting aside from
Farley's handsome costumes. The monochromatic staging is further encumbered
by stiff, presentational blocking that amplifies the operetta aspects but
imposes a stodginess on the human drama, even when Nunn leans hard on the
comedy.
Sole holdover from the production's original incarnation at London's Menier
Chocolate Factory and then in the West End, Hanson too often breaks into
actorish talk-singing in what seems another odd directorial whim. But his
gentle, somewhat lost Fredrik adds a layer of tenderness to the role --
sweetly addled by his love for Anne, and oblivious to Desiree's mounting
irritation as he enthuses, "You Must Meet My Wife." And Hanson's warm
playfulness with Zeta-Jones gives real body to the central relationship.
Lazar also does fine work as dashing but insensitive military man
Carl-Magnus, tamping down the role's pompous buffoonery, while Herdlicka's
cherubic face makes awkward Henrik's raging torment funnier.
Nunn has cast accomplished singers across the board, but the women who flank
Zeta-Jones and Lansbury are problematic. Mallory's Anne is a cartoon of
tittering imbecility, and Davie lacks the brittle sourness for Charlotte,
whose contempt for her openly philandering husband is equaled by her
hopeless love for him.
It's a typically ambivalent view of marriage from Sondheim, but much of the
sting of Charlotte's dialogue, and her acrimonious assessment of their
union, "Every Day a Little Death," is diluted in this unconvincing turn.
It's also one of a number of songs weighed down by lethargic tempi.
The most grating miscalculation -- and the worst example of Nunn's tendency
to vulgarize the comedy -- is Larkin's Petra. With her wandering accent,
she's like a lusty refugee from a Benny Hill sketch. Her "The Miller's Son"
is a wonderful song, its clear-eyed view of love contrasting the cloudier
romantic illusions of the main characters. But this lewd characterization
makes its placement an unwelcome interruption.
What's remarkable, given its unsatisfying elements, is that this "Night
Music" still seduces. Jason Carr's reduced orchestrations for eight
musicians have an airiness that allows the complexity of Sondheim's
three-quarter-time melodies and elegantly clever lyrics to resonate fully.
The choice to refocus the show into a chamber piece was a smart one. But a
director with a more intuitive feel for intimacy and subtlety would have
made more sense.
Sets and costumes, David Farley; lighting, Hartley T.A. Kemp; sound, Dan
Moses Shreier, Gareth Owen; music supervision, Caroline Humphris;
orchestrations, Jason Carr; music coordination, John Miller; wigs and hair,
Paul Huntley; makeup, Angelina Avallone; technical supervision, Aurora
Prods.; associate producers, Broadway Across America, Dan Frishwasser, Jam
Theatricals, Richard Winkler; production stage manager, Ira Mont. Opened
Dec. 13, 2009. Reviewed Dec. 10. Running time: 2 HOURS, 55 MIN.
******************
The Hollywood Reporter
'A Little Night Music'
by Frank Scheck
As anyone who's perused the Broadway Internet chat rooms already knows, the
current revival of Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler's "A Little Night
Music" has already elicited wildly divergent reactions.
This is no surprise for a Sondheim show; the composer's fans, and they are
legion, have always been a highly vocal lot. Trevor Nunn's chamber-music
style rendition, imported here after previous runs at London's Menier
Chocolate Factory and the West End, is indeed a
substantially different "Night Music" than audiences are accustomed to.
But whatever its flaws, it's nonetheless a welcome return of a show that has
inexplicably not received a Broadway revival since the original Hal Prince
production in 1973.
The marquee draw for this production, however, is not the composer but
rather Catherine Zeta-Jones, making her Broadway debut as the glamorous
actress Desiree Armfeldt. Add the reassuring presence of veteran Angela
Lansbury (making her second Broadway appearance in as many seasons) as the
acerbic Madame Armfeldt, and you pretty much have boxoffice insurance.
The musical, based on Ingmar Bergman's classic film "Smiles of a Summer
Night," takes place in turn-of-the-century Sweden and concerns the complexly
amorous adventures of a group of upper-class characters, culminating in a
raucous summer weekend at a country estate.
Nunn's minimalist approach contrasts sharply with Prince's original opulent
staging, with mixed results. There will be many who bemoan the visually drab
sets (largely composed of a large shifting wall and multiple mirrors) and
monochromatic costumes, which add an unnecessary level of literal darkness
to the proceedings. Even more painful to endure is the reduced, mere
eight-piece orchestra which, despite the undeniably skillful orchestrations,
simply doesn't do sufficient justice to Sondheim's magnificent, Tony-winning
score.
On the other hand, this intimate version does a wonderful job of
accentuating the emotional complexities and endlessly witty dialogue of Hugh
Wheeler's book, even if some of the overly broad performances by the
supporting players threaten to overwhelm it.
Zeta-Jones, younger than the performers who have traditionally played the
role, is captivating as Desiree. The actress has musical theater experience,
and it shows; she has terrific stage presence, unlike so many movie stars
who tread the boards, and she sings and moves beautifully.
Her rendition of the oh-so-familiar "Send in the Clowns" is a revelation,
and she handles the poignant and comic aspects of her character with equal
aplomb. She also, as hardly comes as a surprise, looks absolutely gorgeous.
Alexander Hanson, the sole carry-over from the London productions, is superb
as the lawyer Fredrik Egerman, movingly rueful in his middle-aged laments
and amusingly sex-starved as the husband of Anne (Ramona Mallory), his
beautiful but virginal 18-year-old new bride.
Lansbury uses her well-honed theatrical instincts to perfect effect as
Madame Armfeldt, generating huge laughs with her expert delivery of the
character's piercing comic barbs. The strapping Aaron Lazar is highly
amusing and also surprisingly touching as the pompous,
physically imposing Count whose jealousy of Fredrick threatens to become
violent.
Less effective are Hunter Ryan Herdlicka, who turns Henrik, Fredrik's morose
young son, into too much of a caricature; Erin Davie, whose overly morose
Countess robs the character of much of her vibrantly sardonic humor; and
Leigh Ann Larkin, rather too contemporary as the lusty maid Petra.
In this version, Sondheim's brilliant score is more effective in the quieter
numbers than in such normally show-stopping set pieces as the first-act
closer "A Weekend in the Country," which here fails to have the desired
impact.
*****************
New York Magazine
Isn't It Bliss?
by Scott Brown
Half-light can be forgiving-to the aging, to the vain, to the furtive
philanderer-but in Trevor Nunn's stunning, twilit, devastatingly good new
production of A Little Night Music, it's as punishing as the equatorial sun.
Even at intermission, Nunn withholds full illumination, dimming the house
lights to a low smolder. He's clearly trying to induce an exquisitely
heartbreaking case of seasonal affective disorder in his audience, and,
fiendishly, he succeeds. "Perpetual sunset," the chorus sings, "is rather an
unsettling thing." So is this beautiful re-Bergmanized revival of Hugh
Wheeler and Stephen Sondheim's elegiac sex farce (based on Smiles of a
Summer Night), with its restored Nordic tilt, its bracing draughts of carnal
realpolitik, and its ghostly blue ache of some-requited love. "It's the
latitude," says the jaded ex-jade Madame Armfeldt (Angela Lansbury),
explaining the madness of Scandinavians to her granddaughter (Keaton
Whittaker). "A winter when the sun never rises, a summer when the sun never
sets, are more than enough to addle the brain of any man."
That endless in-betweenness is certainly enough to addle Frederik Egerman
(Alexander Hanson, reprising the role that won him much-deserved acclaim at
London's Menier Chocolate Factory, where this production and 2007's
similarly superb Sunday in the Park with George originated). He's a
middle-aged lawyer with a virgin child-wife (the wonderfully batty Ramona
Mallory, a Broadway newcomer), a tortured seminarian for a son (Hunter Ryan
Herdlicka, also new, also great, also batty), and an unscratchable itch for
an old coeval and discarded bedmate, one Desiree Armfeldt (Catherine
Zeta-Jones), a freewheeling actress-of-a-certain-age who's beginning to tire
of life on the circuit. Desiree's also weary of her current paramour, a
jealous and narcissistic dragoon (Aaron Lazar), and happily jettisons him
for another shot at securing Frederik and finally settling down. Throw in
the dragoon's vengeful, co-dependent wife (Grey Gardens' fantastic Erin
Davie, her timing impeccable) and a serving girl (Gypsy's fearless Leigh Ann
Larkin) who subscribes to the Philip Roth school of erotic realism, and the
board is set: Infidelities crisscross like party streamers, lies and
suspicions accumulate, pistols and rapiers and strategically placed
"hip-baths" are drawn.
Soon, all parties are waltzing in broken time from partner to partner,
trying to end the next step on the right foot and wondering, all the while,
why it's worth the effort. Madame Armfeldt, Desiree's terminally unimpressed
mama, owlishly oversees it all, recalling grander days and more glittery
peccadilloes, and delivering one of Sondheim's greatest rhymes: "What once
was a sumptuous feast / Is figs. / No, not even figs - raisins. / Ah,
liaisons!" Lansbury, who capsizes the theater with every roll of those
outsize eyes, hurls mots from her throne like thunderbolts-not a single line
lands askew.
ALNM is among Sondheim's near-perfect creations, but it's not without its
challenges, over and above the complexity of the music: Maunder overmuch and
the show's a drag; shine up the comedy and it risks coming off as a yuppie
you-can-have-it-all manifesto. Maintaining that balance is the job of
Desiree and Frederik, and Zeta-Jones-a tremendous presence here, in great
voice-mates up with Hanson perfectly: They play Desiree and Frederik as
extremely magnetic, fabulously charming, utterly empty people. I say this
admiringly: Yes, they have feelings, deep and complex; yes, despite their
many sins, they deserve love as much as anyone. But neither Zeta-Jones-whose
"Send in the Clowns" is a shattering cry from the void-nor Hanson nor Nunn
makes any excuses for the pair's intrinsic emotional vacuity or their
confessed inability to transcend themselves in any sort of human union. They're
cool, at best, to their children, genially indifferent to their peers, and
they see, in one another, smoked-mirror reflections of themselves. They
cancel each other-and, in the half-light, that's good enough.
Posted: 12/13/09 at 10:05pm
The Meneier CVhololate Factory's production of 'a Little Night Music' has opened on Broadway with Catherine Zeta-Jones and Angela Lansbury.
The first reviews coming in are saying that the Menier as done it yet again.
Maybe this time next year we'll be reading the reviews for their current hit, 'Sweet Charity' as it too conquers Broadway.
Of course we have 'La Cage' to come before that!
******************************************************
Variety.
by David Rooney
A Tom Viertel, Steven Baruch, Marc Routh, Richard Frankel, Menier Chocolate
Factory, Roger Berlind, David Babani, Sonia Friedman Prods., Andrew Fell,
Daryl Roth/Jane Bergere, Harvey Weinstein/Raise the Roof 3, Beverly
Bartner/Dancap Prods., Nica Burns/Max Weitzenhoffer, Eric Falkenstein/Anna
Czekaj, Jerry Frankel/Ronald Frankel, James D. Stern/Douglas L. Meyer
presentation of a musical in two acts with music and lyrics by Stephen
Sondheim, book by Hugh Wheeler, suggested by the Ingmar Bergman film "Smiles
of a Summer Night." Directed by Trevor Nunn. Music direction, Tom Murray.
Choreography, Lynne Page.
Desiree Armfeldt - Catherine Zeta-Jones
Mme. Armfeldt - Angela Lansbury
Fredrik Egerman - Alexander Hanson
Count Carl-Magnus Malcolm - Aaron Lazar
Countess Charlotte Malcolm - Erin Davie
Petra - Leigh Ann Larkin
Henrik Egerman - Hunter Ryan Herdlicka
Anne Egerman - Ramona Mallory
The most atypical of Ingmar Bergman's celebrated films, "Smiles of a Summer
Night" brought ripe carnality and a delicious sense of irony to its
fin-de-siecle gathering of romantically muddled Swedes. Those same
intoxicating elements were translated to "A Little Night Music," Stephen
Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler's exquisite waltz-musical inspired by the film.
Reviving the 1973 show, director Trevor Nunn brings a blunt, heavy hand
where a glissando touch is required, but the wit and sophistication of the
material are sufficient to withstand even this phlegmatic staging. A handful
of magnetic leads provides further insurance against the uneven production.
At the center of that bright cluster is the luminous Catherine Zeta-Jones,
making her Broadway debut as fading actress and inveterate maneater Desiree
Armfeldt. Bewitching, confident and utterly natural, she breathes a
refreshing earthiness and warm-blooded sensuality into the part, even if
she's directed -- in one of the most tiresome traits of Nunn's production --
to underline every suggestion of sexual innuendo in Wheeler's book.
Vulnerability comes late to the performance, but it arrives in Zeta-Jones'
rueful "Send in the Clowns." Some may take issue with the song being played
more as bitter sorrow than self-deprecating introspection. But her handling
of it lends touching dignity to the defeat of a woman who has hitched her
plan for a new life to a man stuck in a misguided infatuation with someone
else.
Zeta-Jones is the star attraction, and she's mesmerizing enough to explain
why men would duel for Desiree's love. But the production's real jewel is
Angela Lansbury as her worldly mother.
The actress has sparkled in plays in recent seasons, but seeing her in a
Sondheim musical is something quite special. Regally coiffed and outfitted,
and with a strength of character undiminished even in the wheelchair she
occupies for much of her stage time, her Mme. Armfeldt can inject tart
flavor into a simple "La la la."
In a musical laced with the delicate shadows of memory, she is the principal
conjurer of remembrances past. Her song "Liaisons" vividly recollects Mme.
Armfeldt's trysts with counts and kings, draped in equal parts melancholy,
humor, conceit and jaded wisdom. She even confronts the beckoning hand of
her mortality with tenacity, raising her glass in a toast, "To death!" It's
a marvelous role, and Lansbury's sublime performance in it alone makes this
production unmissable.
There's also a lovely three-generational throughline completed by the
charming Keaton Whittaker's preternaturally intelligent Fredricka, who
figures as Puck in this Scandinavian "Midsummer Night's Dream."
Observing and intervening in the tangled relationships of the adults
waltzing around her in perpetual twilight, she hungrily soaks up lessons on
life, love and dental care from her grandmother. She also proves a complicit
aid when her mostly absentee mother, Desiree, descends on Mme. Armfeldt's
estate on a romantic mission. (Whittaker alternates in the role with
Katherine Leigh Doherty.)
Desiree's plan is to secure the affections of former lover Fredrik Egerman
(Alexander Hanson), a lawyer whose child-bride, Anne (Ramona Mallory),
remains a virgin almost a year into their marriage. Tagging along with them
for "A Weekend in the Country" is Fredrik's son by his first marriage,
Henrik (Hunter Ryan Herdlicka). The gloomy theology student also carries a
torch for Anne, taking out his sexual frustration on his cello or, with less
success, on frisky maid Petra (Leigh Ann Larkin).
Jealous that Fredrik's reappearance in her life has quenched Desiree's
appetite for him, her lover Count Carl-Magnus Malcolm (Aaron Lazar) also
arrives uninvited at the estate, with long-suffering wife Charlotte (Erin
Davie) in tow.
Nunn signals his mechanical grasp of this plot of amorous intrigues past,
present and future in a ghostly opening, with the choral quintet bumping
about in Hartley T.A. Kemp's half-light against designer David Farley's
spare set of mottled, mirrored walls. The atmosphere is unmistakably one of
dusty gentility, but visually, it's dour and uninteresting aside from
Farley's handsome costumes. The monochromatic staging is further encumbered
by stiff, presentational blocking that amplifies the operetta aspects but
imposes a stodginess on the human drama, even when Nunn leans hard on the
comedy.
Sole holdover from the production's original incarnation at London's Menier
Chocolate Factory and then in the West End, Hanson too often breaks into
actorish talk-singing in what seems another odd directorial whim. But his
gentle, somewhat lost Fredrik adds a layer of tenderness to the role --
sweetly addled by his love for Anne, and oblivious to Desiree's mounting
irritation as he enthuses, "You Must Meet My Wife." And Hanson's warm
playfulness with Zeta-Jones gives real body to the central relationship.
Lazar also does fine work as dashing but insensitive military man
Carl-Magnus, tamping down the role's pompous buffoonery, while Herdlicka's
cherubic face makes awkward Henrik's raging torment funnier.
Nunn has cast accomplished singers across the board, but the women who flank
Zeta-Jones and Lansbury are problematic. Mallory's Anne is a cartoon of
tittering imbecility, and Davie lacks the brittle sourness for Charlotte,
whose contempt for her openly philandering husband is equaled by her
hopeless love for him.
It's a typically ambivalent view of marriage from Sondheim, but much of the
sting of Charlotte's dialogue, and her acrimonious assessment of their
union, "Every Day a Little Death," is diluted in this unconvincing turn.
It's also one of a number of songs weighed down by lethargic tempi.
The most grating miscalculation -- and the worst example of Nunn's tendency
to vulgarize the comedy -- is Larkin's Petra. With her wandering accent,
she's like a lusty refugee from a Benny Hill sketch. Her "The Miller's Son"
is a wonderful song, its clear-eyed view of love contrasting the cloudier
romantic illusions of the main characters. But this lewd characterization
makes its placement an unwelcome interruption.
What's remarkable, given its unsatisfying elements, is that this "Night
Music" still seduces. Jason Carr's reduced orchestrations for eight
musicians have an airiness that allows the complexity of Sondheim's
three-quarter-time melodies and elegantly clever lyrics to resonate fully.
The choice to refocus the show into a chamber piece was a smart one. But a
director with a more intuitive feel for intimacy and subtlety would have
made more sense.
Sets and costumes, David Farley; lighting, Hartley T.A. Kemp; sound, Dan
Moses Shreier, Gareth Owen; music supervision, Caroline Humphris;
orchestrations, Jason Carr; music coordination, John Miller; wigs and hair,
Paul Huntley; makeup, Angelina Avallone; technical supervision, Aurora
Prods.; associate producers, Broadway Across America, Dan Frishwasser, Jam
Theatricals, Richard Winkler; production stage manager, Ira Mont. Opened
Dec. 13, 2009. Reviewed Dec. 10. Running time: 2 HOURS, 55 MIN.
******************
The Hollywood Reporter
'A Little Night Music'
by Frank Scheck
As anyone who's perused the Broadway Internet chat rooms already knows, the
current revival of Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler's "A Little Night
Music" has already elicited wildly divergent reactions.
This is no surprise for a Sondheim show; the composer's fans, and they are
legion, have always been a highly vocal lot. Trevor Nunn's chamber-music
style rendition, imported here after previous runs at London's Menier
Chocolate Factory and the West End, is indeed a
substantially different "Night Music" than audiences are accustomed to.
But whatever its flaws, it's nonetheless a welcome return of a show that has
inexplicably not received a Broadway revival since the original Hal Prince
production in 1973.
The marquee draw for this production, however, is not the composer but
rather Catherine Zeta-Jones, making her Broadway debut as the glamorous
actress Desiree Armfeldt. Add the reassuring presence of veteran Angela
Lansbury (making her second Broadway appearance in as many seasons) as the
acerbic Madame Armfeldt, and you pretty much have boxoffice insurance.
The musical, based on Ingmar Bergman's classic film "Smiles of a Summer
Night," takes place in turn-of-the-century Sweden and concerns the complexly
amorous adventures of a group of upper-class characters, culminating in a
raucous summer weekend at a country estate.
Nunn's minimalist approach contrasts sharply with Prince's original opulent
staging, with mixed results. There will be many who bemoan the visually drab
sets (largely composed of a large shifting wall and multiple mirrors) and
monochromatic costumes, which add an unnecessary level of literal darkness
to the proceedings. Even more painful to endure is the reduced, mere
eight-piece orchestra which, despite the undeniably skillful orchestrations,
simply doesn't do sufficient justice to Sondheim's magnificent, Tony-winning
score.
On the other hand, this intimate version does a wonderful job of
accentuating the emotional complexities and endlessly witty dialogue of Hugh
Wheeler's book, even if some of the overly broad performances by the
supporting players threaten to overwhelm it.
Zeta-Jones, younger than the performers who have traditionally played the
role, is captivating as Desiree. The actress has musical theater experience,
and it shows; she has terrific stage presence, unlike so many movie stars
who tread the boards, and she sings and moves beautifully.
Her rendition of the oh-so-familiar "Send in the Clowns" is a revelation,
and she handles the poignant and comic aspects of her character with equal
aplomb. She also, as hardly comes as a surprise, looks absolutely gorgeous.
Alexander Hanson, the sole carry-over from the London productions, is superb
as the lawyer Fredrik Egerman, movingly rueful in his middle-aged laments
and amusingly sex-starved as the husband of Anne (Ramona Mallory), his
beautiful but virginal 18-year-old new bride.
Lansbury uses her well-honed theatrical instincts to perfect effect as
Madame Armfeldt, generating huge laughs with her expert delivery of the
character's piercing comic barbs. The strapping Aaron Lazar is highly
amusing and also surprisingly touching as the pompous,
physically imposing Count whose jealousy of Fredrick threatens to become
violent.
Less effective are Hunter Ryan Herdlicka, who turns Henrik, Fredrik's morose
young son, into too much of a caricature; Erin Davie, whose overly morose
Countess robs the character of much of her vibrantly sardonic humor; and
Leigh Ann Larkin, rather too contemporary as the lusty maid Petra.
In this version, Sondheim's brilliant score is more effective in the quieter
numbers than in such normally show-stopping set pieces as the first-act
closer "A Weekend in the Country," which here fails to have the desired
impact.
*****************
New York Magazine
Isn't It Bliss?
by Scott Brown
Half-light can be forgiving-to the aging, to the vain, to the furtive
philanderer-but in Trevor Nunn's stunning, twilit, devastatingly good new
production of A Little Night Music, it's as punishing as the equatorial sun.
Even at intermission, Nunn withholds full illumination, dimming the house
lights to a low smolder. He's clearly trying to induce an exquisitely
heartbreaking case of seasonal affective disorder in his audience, and,
fiendishly, he succeeds. "Perpetual sunset," the chorus sings, "is rather an
unsettling thing." So is this beautiful re-Bergmanized revival of Hugh
Wheeler and Stephen Sondheim's elegiac sex farce (based on Smiles of a
Summer Night), with its restored Nordic tilt, its bracing draughts of carnal
realpolitik, and its ghostly blue ache of some-requited love. "It's the
latitude," says the jaded ex-jade Madame Armfeldt (Angela Lansbury),
explaining the madness of Scandinavians to her granddaughter (Keaton
Whittaker). "A winter when the sun never rises, a summer when the sun never
sets, are more than enough to addle the brain of any man."
That endless in-betweenness is certainly enough to addle Frederik Egerman
(Alexander Hanson, reprising the role that won him much-deserved acclaim at
London's Menier Chocolate Factory, where this production and 2007's
similarly superb Sunday in the Park with George originated). He's a
middle-aged lawyer with a virgin child-wife (the wonderfully batty Ramona
Mallory, a Broadway newcomer), a tortured seminarian for a son (Hunter Ryan
Herdlicka, also new, also great, also batty), and an unscratchable itch for
an old coeval and discarded bedmate, one Desiree Armfeldt (Catherine
Zeta-Jones), a freewheeling actress-of-a-certain-age who's beginning to tire
of life on the circuit. Desiree's also weary of her current paramour, a
jealous and narcissistic dragoon (Aaron Lazar), and happily jettisons him
for another shot at securing Frederik and finally settling down. Throw in
the dragoon's vengeful, co-dependent wife (Grey Gardens' fantastic Erin
Davie, her timing impeccable) and a serving girl (Gypsy's fearless Leigh Ann
Larkin) who subscribes to the Philip Roth school of erotic realism, and the
board is set: Infidelities crisscross like party streamers, lies and
suspicions accumulate, pistols and rapiers and strategically placed
"hip-baths" are drawn.
Soon, all parties are waltzing in broken time from partner to partner,
trying to end the next step on the right foot and wondering, all the while,
why it's worth the effort. Madame Armfeldt, Desiree's terminally unimpressed
mama, owlishly oversees it all, recalling grander days and more glittery
peccadilloes, and delivering one of Sondheim's greatest rhymes: "What once
was a sumptuous feast / Is figs. / No, not even figs - raisins. / Ah,
liaisons!" Lansbury, who capsizes the theater with every roll of those
outsize eyes, hurls mots from her throne like thunderbolts-not a single line
lands askew.
ALNM is among Sondheim's near-perfect creations, but it's not without its
challenges, over and above the complexity of the music: Maunder overmuch and
the show's a drag; shine up the comedy and it risks coming off as a yuppie
you-can-have-it-all manifesto. Maintaining that balance is the job of
Desiree and Frederik, and Zeta-Jones-a tremendous presence here, in great
voice-mates up with Hanson perfectly: They play Desiree and Frederik as
extremely magnetic, fabulously charming, utterly empty people. I say this
admiringly: Yes, they have feelings, deep and complex; yes, despite their
many sins, they deserve love as much as anyone. But neither Zeta-Jones-whose
"Send in the Clowns" is a shattering cry from the void-nor Hanson nor Nunn
makes any excuses for the pair's intrinsic emotional vacuity or their
confessed inability to transcend themselves in any sort of human union. They're
cool, at best, to their children, genially indifferent to their peers, and
they see, in one another, smoked-mirror reflections of themselves. They
cancel each other-and, in the half-light, that's good enough.
Updated On: 12/13/09 at 10:05 PM
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