A Little Night Music
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And this carefully reconsidered version is by far the best of the half dozen productions I’ve seen, including Prince’s original Broadway staging with Glynis Johns and the Goodman’s 1994 revival, starring Paula Scrofano under the direction of Michael Maggio. Director Gary Griffin and musical director Thomas Murray have specialized, over the past couple of years, in stripping traditionally lavish shows to their essence–their music and characters. As in their previous collaborations (Sondheim and Prince’s Pacific Overtures, which Chicago Shakespeare took to London, and a minimalist My Fair Lady for Court Theatre), Griffin and Murray here have rethought every dramatic beat, every phrase of the text, every dynamic in the score. The result does full justice to the material’s operetta charm while restoring a Chekhovian tone of wistfulness and wry bemusement that Sondheim intended but most directors–including Prince–avoided.
Based on the 1955 movie Smiles of a Summer Night–a rare comic effort from Swedish filmmaker Ingmar Bergman–A Little Night Music is set in Sweden at the dawn of the 20th century and centers on two seemingly ill-sorted lovers. Flighty actress Desiree and steady, somewhat stuffy attorney Fredrik, who had an affair 14 years earlier, reconnect when Desiree’s tour brings her to Fredrik’s town. He’s now married to his second wife, Anne–a sweet young thing who regards him more as a father figure than a husband and who’s declined to consummate their marriage. The real object of Anne’s affections, though she doesn’t realize it yet, is Fredrik’s moody seminarian son, Henrik. Desiree, meanwhile, has a 14-year-old illegitimate daughter, Fredrika (you do the math). While the actress tours, the girl resides with Desiree’s mother, Madame Armfeldt, an ex-courtesan living off the wealth she accumulated through a string of affairs. For Madame Armfeldt sex has always been “a pleasurable means to a measurable end,” and she’s appalled by Desiree’s footloose, free-love lifestyle.
With his sleek shaved head and impeccably trimmed mustache, Michael Cerveris as Carl-Magnus is a wonderful Prussian peacock. Cerveris not only has a richly operatic voice, he’s an inventive comic actor who forges unexpected connections from moment to moment. His neurotic wife is played by English actor Samantha Spiro, one of several Brits in the production due to an agreement hammered out between the American and UK actors’ unions to accommodate the London run of Griffin’s Pacific Overtures. Spiro is a very funny comedienne who recalls Prunella Scales in Fawlty Towers and Jennifer Saunders in Absolutely Fabulous, but she takes her arch mannerisms too far in a show distinguished by its honest acting. And she makes mincemeat of what should be the crisp rhythms of “Every Day a Little Death.”
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photo/Michael Brosilow.
