Below are BroadwayWorld.com's blogs from Sunday, December 13, 2009. Catch up below on anything that you might have missed from BroadwayWorld.com's bloggers!
A LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC Review Roundup
by Robert Diamond - December 13, 2009
Academy Award-winner Catherine Zeta-Jones, five-time Tony Award®-winner Angela Lansbury and Olivier Award-nominee Alexander Hanson star in the first Broadway revival of Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler's Tony Award-winning A LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC, directed by Tony Award®- winner Trevor Nunn. A LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC - featuring a score by Stephen Sondheim and a book by Hugh Wheeler - originally opened in 1973 at Broadway's Shubert Theatre and ran for 601 performances. Produced and directed by Harold Prince, the production garnered six Tony Awards® including Best Musical and Best Original Score. The Sondheim score features one of the composer's best-known songs, "Send in the Clowns," as well as "Every Day a Little Death," "The Miller's Son" and "A Weekend in the Country." Trevor Nunn's production of A LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC debuted to critical acclaim at London's Menier Chocolate Factory in November 2008 and subsequently transferred to the West End where it played a successful limited engagement through July 25, 2009 at the Garrick Theatre. David Rooney, Variety: "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." Elysa Gardner, USA Today: "Lansbury created roles in two Sondheim shows, the short-lived cult classic Anyone Can Whistle (undone by a messy libretto) and the enduring masterpiece Sweeney Todd. Now, at 84, she is gloriously reviving the part of Madame Armfeldt in director Trevor Nunn's new production of A Little Night Music (*** out of four), which opened Sunday at the Walter Kerr Theatre." Erik Haagensen, Backstage.com: "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." Michael Kuchwara, Associated Press: "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." Frank Scheck, Hollywood Reporter: "Bottom Line: This uneven but welcome revival of Sondheim's classicmusical features a triumphant Broadway debut by Catherine Zeta-Jones." Ben Brantley, The New York Times (up on another web site early for reasons I've yet to figure out, probably a weird content licensing deal): "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 Zeta-Jones) or "She's amazing for her age" (in reference to the 84-year-old Lansbury)." Michael Sommers, NewJerseyNewsroom.com: Looking as elegant as the musical she graces, Catherine Zeta-Jones makes a smashing Broadway debut in a wistful revival of "A Little Night Music." Co-starred with the redoubtable Angela Lansbury as her imperious old mama in a romantic comedy set in early 1900s Sweden, Zeta-Jones portrays Desiree, a middle-aged actress who gets a second chance at true love with a former flame." Scott Brown, New York Magazine: "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." More reviews to come... |
To Line Up, or Not to Line Up at Broadway Theatre...
by Robert Diamond - December 13, 2009 105.9 FM's Sunday Brunch host and longtime friend to the theatre and BroadwayWorld.com, Elliott Forrest, has written a piece for the station's web site entitled "Queue the Audience?" in which he sounds off on what he calls a "disturbing new trend" - of audiences lining up outside the theatre before the show, instead of entering en masse like used to be the tradition. His piece has gotten a slew of feedback on the site from audience-goers. I truly don't have much of a personal opinion on the subject -- I like a good, organized line as much as the next guy, but usually just walk right in myself. How about you?
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