Nominated for 4 Tony Awards including Best Revival of a Musical, the first Broadway revival of Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler’s Tony Award-winning masterpiece A Little Night Music, directed by Tony Award®-winner Trevor Nunn, based on Ingmar Bergman's film Smiles of a Summer Night, is set in a weekend country house in turn of the century Sweden, bringing together surprising liaisons, long simmering passions and a taste of love's endless possibilities. Now starring Tony®, Grammy® & Golden Globe® Award winner Bernadette Peters and Tony® & Emmy ®Award winner Elaine Stritch. Casting after November 7 is TBD.
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?
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.
1973 | Broadway |
Original Broadway Production Broadway |
1974 | US Tour |
National Tour US Tour |
1975 | West End |
London Production West End |
1977 | College/University (US) |
Northwestern University Production College/University (US) |
1981 | Off-Off-Broadway |
Off-Off-Broadway Revival Off-Off-Broadway |
1985 | Off-Broadway |
Equity Library Theatre Revival Off-Broadway |
1989 | West End |
London Revival West End |
1990 | Off-Broadway |
New York City Opera Revival Off-Broadway |
1991 | Off-Broadway |
Return Engagement [NYCO Revival] Off-Broadway |
1995 | West End |
Royal National Theatre Production West End |
2002 | Regional (US) |
Sondheim Festival Production Regional (US) |
2003 | Off-Broadway |
New York City Opera Production Off-Broadway |
2009 | West End |
West End Transfer West End |
2009 | Broadway |
Broadway Revival Broadway |
2020 | Los Angeles |
Knot Free Productions Production Los Angeles |
Year | Ceremony | Category | Nominee |
---|---|---|---|
2010 | Outer Critics Circle Awards | Outstanding Featured Actress in a Musical | Angela Lansbury |
2009 | Drama Desk Awards | Outstanding Actress in a Musical (tie) | Catherine Zeta-Jones |
2009 | Drama Desk Awards | Outstanding Featured Actress in a Musical | Angela Lansbury |
2009 | Drama Desk Awards | Outstanding Revival of a Musical | A Little Night Music |
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