stage
Talk about pedigree. A Little Night Music, with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, was inspired by the late Ingmar Bergman’s exquisite, angst-free-except-in-a-brilliantly-understated-comic-way film, Smiles of a Summer Night, which was inspired by A Midsummer Night’s Dream. And then there’s this: In the words of an audience member in the Live Arts lobby before the show, "Stephen Sondheim rocks!" Translated into nonlayman’s terms: Since the 1950s, Sondheim’s lyrics have injected new life—uncommon grit, silliness, erudition, you name it—into the American musical, and his music has added classical splendor and inventiveness to the traditional show tune regimen.
 Send in the clowns, sure, but let’s not overdo it: The music hits home, but the comedy of Sondheim’s A Little Night Music hits just a tad too hard. |
In short, the opening night of Sondheim’s 1973 A Little Night Music (book by Hugh Wheeler) was crawling with high expectations. Would this Live Arts production bring to life the 19th century Swedish world of Fredrik Egerman (Dan Stern), who’s saddled with a frigid teenage wife (Rosa Parma Brown) and whose mind keeps wandering to a former lover, the actress Disiree Armfeldt (Linda Waller)?
The answer is a limp, though not quite frigid, "sort of."
It’s time once again to dust off Oscar Wilde’s famous warning to comic actors to play their parts with an unconscious seriousness. In other words, the comedy falters if the audience is aware that the actors are aware that they’re in a comedy. Director John Owen’s principal actors are prone to exaggerating their characters and dressing up their lines, and therefore the audience doesn’t have the chance to joyfully teeter on a subtle edge. Owen is in an unenviable position: Encouraging too much seriousness can lead to flatness. But good productions of comedies are all about brewing up some thespian magic to create a fine balance. The lack of balance also seems to have affected the pacing. The whole production vacillates between moving with a stately grace and moving in slow motion.
The good news is that the 15 cast members and Owen and musical director Greg Harris are adept at presenting the elaborate toying with show tune conventions in Sondheim’s lyrics, as well as the often cunning and always bewitching rhythms of his music. All this despite the fact that the four-person ensemble led by Harris at the keyboard off to the edge of the stage sounds at times like it’s behind a concrete bulwark.
In short, an enjoyable night at the theater is tempered by the sense that Live Arts has a ways to go before it can claim to be the No. 1 place in town to see a musical.