Recordings > Musical Theater
SONDHEIM:
A Little Night Music
Zeta-Jones, Lansbury, Davie; Hanson, Lazar; Murray, conductor/piano. Nonesuch 523488-2
A genuine classic can survive intact in various hands, improved or unimproved but still somehow satisfying. In 1973, A Little Night Music, Stephen Sondheim's gem-like masterpiece, announced that high-style sophistication in the theater wasn't really dead: at a time when everyone complained that you went out of a Sondheim show humming the lyrics, the composer wrote tune after memorable tune and gave the waltz a sexy new life on Broadway.
How nice it was to have A Little Night Music back on Broadway in 2010, in Trevor Nunn's scaled-down production from London's Menier Chocolate Factory. There are only twelve musicians, including conductor–pianist Tom Murray, playing in this show's new orchestration, devised by Jason Carr. There are some lovely performances here, in a score that is continually delightful.
The middlebrow references in the lyrics, from Stendhal's The Red and the Black to The Bartered Bride, hint at something pretentious, but the show is much more approachable than that. It boasts not just one eleven o'clock number, the poignant "Send in the Clowns," but the belted-out ballad "The Miller's Son." Some might savor the subtle Ravel-like waltzes that infuse Sondheim's musical action, but his score also holds the rollicking "A Weekend in the Country." And as Frank Rich points out in the essay that accompanies this recording, the show has that rare thing for a Sondheim musical — a happy ending. No wonder opera companies program it when looking to Broadway to expand their repertoire. A Little Night Music benefits from legitimate voices and a full orchestra.
In this recording I missed some of both. The five-person Swedish Greek chorus has some good singers in it; the quintet also has a singer (or two) who seems to believe that a Californian inflection will add feeling, or that singing a line off the beat can give added meaning, when all such tricks really show is lack of musicianship. I don't know why the production team cast a Carl-Magnus, Aaron Lazar, who is almost vocally indistinguishable from Alexander Hanson, as his adversary, Fredrik. The casting might have worked onstage, but when listening to this disc, I wasn't sure who was singing what in the mordant "It Would Have Been Wonderful." I also longed for a richer orchestral sound. But then I found myself enchanted by the excellent Erin Davie in world-weary Charlotte's "Every Day a Little Death" and thrilled by the opening trio "Now/Later/Soon," sung by Hanson, Ramona Mallory (Anne) and Hunter Ryan Herdlicka (Henrik).
This recording includes dialogue from Hugh Wheeler's book that never made it onto the original cast album. (Note to record producers: when adding dialogue, make sure you have actors who can pull it off.) It is delightful to hear a trouper such as Angela Lansbury milk every syllable of Madame Armfeldt's lines. As her daughter, Desirée, Catherine Zeta-Jones sounds a little arch but brings fresh anguish and heat to "Send in the Clowns," even though she's no more a singer than the original Desirée, Glynis Johns.
It would be hard to improve on the original 1973 cast album of A Little Night Music, with its full orchestra and its classic performances from Johns and Hermione Gingold, the first Madame Armfeldt. The present Night Music sets no new benchmarks, but it reminds us that perfection is less fragile than we thought.
RICK HAMLIN
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