A Little Night Music Broadway Reviews

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.”

Maybe you liked Hal Prince’s original staging of A Little Night Music better. Fine, you were blown away by Judi Dench’s interpretation of Desirée in London in 1995. But the new revival of Night Music, which opened at the Walter Kerr Sunday night—the first Broadway production since its 1973 premiere, though it has been mounted several times by the City Opera—is a fantastic night at the theater, an entrancing, lovely, delightfully cast production of a Stephen Sondheim classic.

Crafted as a chamber piece with less than a dozen characters and a four-member vocal ensemble, 'A Little Night Music' is directed by Trevor Nunn in a particularly intimate fashion. Expect not a ton of fancy scenery and spectacular 1900s costumes. Staged more as a rueful comedy with music, this show unfolds quietly against a flexible setting of duskily mirrored panels that later opens to disclose a modest view of birch trees.

Sondheim being Sondheim, you know that anything he writes is going to be intelligent, sophisticated, witty and lyrical, often self-consciously so. That's all there in the revival of his 1973 musical 'A Little Night Music,' directed by Trevor Nunn whose acclaimed London production made the trip across the pond. As modern musicals go, it's considered by many the gold standard and this production turns out to be beautiful and deeply resonant, hitting every note with stunning honesty.

With time, I suspect that she too will get into the rhythm of director Trevor Nunn's smartly executed production. There was always something a little odd about making a star vehicle for Zeta-Jones out of a show that is very much an ensemble piece. A certain balance has been restored to A Little Night Music in its current incarnation. As the song goes: Isn't it rich! A-

With everybody firing on all cylinders, Nunn's spare, twilit staging finally makes sense, and even the smallness of the orchestra feels appropriate. This is about presenting Sondheim's sorry-grateful, regretful-happy take on love, sex and marriage without pretenses or adornments -- but with plenty of style and wit. How adult!

She and Stritch, a fellow Tony winner, are making a welcome return. When Stritch sings of failing standards in 'Liaisons,' she's not talking about acting (well, not in the traditional sense) but one can't help extrapolating a bit. 'Where is style?' she asks. 'Where is skill?' 'Where's passion in the art, where's craft?' Here's one place you can look: Right at her, onstage at the Walter Kerr Theatre.

I have always felt that director Trevor Nunn approaches musicals and plays with different palettes: broad and bold for the former, detailed and nuanced for the latter. In this chamber version of 'A Little Night Music,' however, he seems to have applied his play palette to a musical. While it's hard not to miss the romantic sweep and orchestral lushness of Harold Prince's glorious original production, which I saw on national tour multiple times, what Nunn delivers is a persuasive and entertaining account of a great American musical.

It is lucky enough when a replacement cast can match the original one; it is more than serendipitous when the newcomers surpass their predecessors. That is the case with “A Little Night Music,” which resumes after a recess, with Bernadette Peters and Elaine Stritch taking over for Catherine Zeta-Jones and Angela Lansbury, respectively.

Bottom Line: New leads Bernadette Peters and Elaine Stritch bring a whole new level to a show that demands a repeat visit.

But for theater lovers there can be no greater current pleasure than to witness Bernadette Peters perform the show's signature number, 'Send In the Clowns,' with an emotional transparency and musical delicacy that turns this celebrated song into an occasion of transporting artistry. I'm not sure I've ever experienced with such palpable force - or such prominent goose bumps - the sense of being present at an indelible moment in the history of musical theater.

This being the first Broadway revival of 'A Little Night Music,' I get the feeling that many felt as if it should have been bigger and brighter and more expensive, rather like the Lincoln Center Theater revival of 'South Pacific.' Nevertheless, on the whole, this is a really beautiful production. And I do believe that many will find great satisfaction in it.

If you want to mount a new Broadway production of A Little Night Music, you're best to heed advice based on the biggest hit from Stephen Sondheim's 1973 musical: Send in the movie stars. And so they have, tapping Oscar winner Catherine Zeta-Jones to play the haughty and brazenly adulterous actress Desiree Armfeldt. It's an inspired choice, since Zeta-Jones' Hollywood glam buttresses the role's necessary off-puttingness. And the actress pulls off the challenge, comfortably commanding the stage as if it were just another red carpet to be conquered. While she may not outshine some of Broadway's best-known divas in the strength or quality of her singing voice (it's solid, but a little nasal), she sells her numbers as only a great actress can. And her second-act rendition of 'Send in the Clowns' is an emotional tour de force not to be missed. Likewise, Angela Lansbury offers a master class in character acting as Desiree's ancient mother, Madame Armfeldt, wringing out every poignant beat and punchline.

What a difference a diva makes. Bernadette Peters steps into the six-month-old revival of 'A Little Night Music' with a transfixing performance, playing it as if she realizes her character's onstage billing -- 'the one and only Desiree Armfeldt' -- is cliched hyperbole. By figuratively rolling her eyes at the hype, Peters gives us a rich, warm and comedically human Desiree, which reaches full impact when she pierces the facade with a nakedly honest, tears-on-cheek 'Send in the Clowns.'

They are, in a word, bewitching. And they give performances quite unlike their predecessors. Just for the record (go look it up), I enjoyed more than some colleagues director Trevor Nunn's leisurely, intimately scaled, darker-toned take on this sophisticated musical affair about former lovers Desiree and Fredrik, now middle-aged, who rekindle their romance in spite of other attachments.

New York's heat wave has apparently swept all the way to Sweden, the locale of 'A Little Night Music.' Suddenly, the Stephen Sondheim-Hugh Wheeler musical is aglow with a brilliant and irresistible warmth. Don't credit the climate. Thank Bernadette Peters, who's assumed the role of Desiree Armfeldt, the famous but fading actress played to Tony-winning effect by Catherine Zeta-Jones.

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.

If you’ve never seen a production of this romantic classic, by all means, go. The principals are suave and poised, and although Nunn seems to have encouraged them to sing their lyrics somewhat pedantically over the music, they sparkle and charm. Not to be missed is the venerable Lansbury putting her personal stamp on another Sondheim character. Alexander Hanson is a dashing figure, the sort of mature leading man we hardly ever see on Broadway. Would someone please steal his passport?

'A Little Night Music' is one of the most delectable musicals ever written, by Stephen Sondheim or anyone else. Angela Lansbury is giving a performance that deserves to be part of theater legend. Catherine Zeta-Jones is earthy and poignant in her confident Broadway debut. With all that, it is easier to live with - if not really forgive - the visual drabness and heavy hand of this gorgeous musical's first revival since its Tony-winning 1973 premiere. Director Trevor Nunn's skimpy production, conceived last year for London's tiny Meniere Chocolate Factory, arrives with another of those scandalously reduced orchestras that Broadway producers try to pass off these days as innovation.

Zeta-Jones is less effective, though, at suggesting Desiree's weary, rueful edges. Her throaty laughter seems almost too emphatic at times, as does her singing, whether she's showing her claws in You Must Meet My Wife or acknowledging defeat in Send in the Clowns. This might owe something to Nunn's direction, as other performances here flirt with overzealousness. Ramona Mallory is particularly shrill as Anne, Fredrik's post-pubescent second wife. To be fair, Music demands a capacity for both broad comedy and pathos, and the director and cast mine and juggle these qualities rigorously and, for the most part, skillfully. None of them, of course, blend wit and poignancy better than Lansbury — or Sondheim's score, for that matter. They are, without question, the two best reasons to see this revival.

Trevor Nunn's murky-looking production (did he and lighting designer Hartley T A Kemp take the 'night' in the title literally?) isn't particularly subtle or graceful. Lacking both nuance and energy, it struggles to match the sophistication and gamesmanship of Sondheim's score, which evokes the effervescence of love, the abject pain it can cause, and the melancholy of its aftermath -- sometimes all in the same song.

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.

Bernadette Peters and Elaine Stritch are offering a mother-daughter combo far closer to that created by the roles’ incomparable originators, Glynis Johns and Hermione Gingold, than to the excellent work of Catherine Zeta-Jones and Angela Lansbury. And you know what? The company has adjusted, and the show is still pretty wonderful.

So, it is richly rewarding to at last get to see this lovely, intelligent show unfold before my eyes on a Broadway stage. Now if only the parts were worthy of this remarkable whole! Unfortunately, this production, directed by Trevor Nunn and based on one he did at the intimate Menier Chocolate Factory in London a year ago, fails to deliver on most fronts. The main failing here is the presentation of the music. Music director Tom Murray leads a tiny band of eight musicians, and they never provide the lush sound that this show needs and deserves. (Check out Lincoln Center's South Pacific if you're not sure what I'm talking about.) Most of the cast sings—well, not poorly, but oddly: words are pronounced strangely and phrased weirdly, and some of the songs are more spoken than sung. And the tempo is disturbingly sluggish.

What the set lacks, Nunn tries to make up for with business. Not so much stage movement as general heartiness, frolicsomeness, primping and posturing, inordinate onstage laughter and whatever it takes to goose elegant comedy into rude farce. Slimmer and coarser, the production will not supplant anyone’s memory of the visual and kinetic elegance of Hal Prince’s 1973 original. A mixed bag, then, made desirable by Sondheim’s music -- far from little and equally good for night and day.

Mr. Nunn’s “Little Night Music,” the first full Broadway revival of the show, may well be a hit too, though not because of any artistic finesse. It has what is a producer’s favorite form of insurance these days: stars known to the public from movies, television and tabloids, of whom people can later say things like “She’s even more beautiful in person” (as they surely will of the lustrous Ms. Zeta-Jones) or “She’s amazing for her age” (in reference to the 84-year-old Ms. Lansbury).

Though the show is mostly well sung, the small orchestra sounds thin. The scenery recalls department store windows - nothing romantic in that. Sluggish pacing makes it feel like 'A Lotta Night Music' and performances are too modern for a tale of romantic entanglements in late-19th century Scandinavia.

The first Broadway revival of 'A Little Night Music,' the enchanting, moonstruck musical based on the Ingmar Bergman film 'Smiles of a Summer Night,' is a curious affair. There are some lovely moments, most of them supplied by Angela Lansbury, but too much of this adult, sophisticated show, which opened Sunday at the Walter Kerr Theatre, seems forced, boisterous and a little crude.

With the handiwork of Sondheim and librettist Hugh Wheeler, however, he seems far less clued in. For this elegant Scandinavian roundel of amour, of foolish old lovers and foolish young lovers, of characters who couple for sex or for vanity or for an annuity, Nunn takes us on what feels like a cheap date. (The production's origin is London's Menier Chocolate Factory, supplier of the far superior 'Sunday in the Park With George' on Broadway in 2008.) The physical realm is especially grim: a few desultory walls, a few bland sticks of furniture; only David Farley's frocks, particularly for Zeta-Jones, attempt to bottle the sumptuousness that seems an essential aspect of 'Night Music.' Sure, the rage in musicals these days is to make them quasi-concerts, to bring down the scale and thereby underline what they are really about, the vitality of the words and music. Sometimes, though, the eye wants the stage itself to be a pretty face. You are reminded of this as you watch 'Night Music's' 'A Weekend in the Country,' one of the most satisfying Act 1 finales of all time, and you realize you have only the most physically impoverished notion of where these characters are, and where they are going.

Will they be able to keep the show open for another six months? I doubt it—and not just because they lack the name recognition necessary to galvanize the tourist trade. Much as I esteem both women, neither one of them is well cast.