A Little Night Music

“A Little Night Music” performance review, The Daily Cardinal, April 2000

It’s ironic that Stephen Sondheim, one of Broadway’s most routinely honored names, remains something of a dark figure. His name is known to many, and the titles with which he’s connected — West Side Story, Gypsy, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Company, Follies, Sunday in the Park with George, Sweeney Todd — are musicals of imposing significance, artistically if not always commercially. His 1973 effort, A Little Night Music, being presented through Sunday as a joint production of University Opera and University Theatre at the Wisconsin Union Theater, is one of the composer’s most undiluted commercial successes. It won Sondheim a record-breaking fourth consecutive Tony® Award for Best Score and was nominated for 11 others, including Best Musical (which it also won).

Yet it figures obscurely in the public’s consciousness of musical theater. This fate may have to do with the time in which the show was conceived, a period that finds the musical form in eclipse. It may also be that Sondheim has rarely pandered to his audience, affecting a pose, in musical terms, too aloof and enigmatic to speak to the basic whims of the Broadway audience.

But in the end, it was most likely the snow that accounted for the small opening night crowd last Friday night. It may have been for the best. Friday’s show was marred by poor sound, with choppy mixing and fuzzy glitches undermining the production in nearly every scene. The show is troubled also by imperfect casting of its principle characters; leaden pacing and choreographic sequences; and tepid, overly meticulous performances, especially of the musical numbers. In fact, some of the songs even seem dispensable, while others are only tedious.

Before writing this production off entirely, it should be said that the second act is not without its share of fine moments — especially the play’s frothy denouement, and a performance of the show’s signature song, “Send in the Clowns.” Placed in its proper dramatic context and stripped of the appalling easy-listening arrangement for which it is popularly known, the song, delicately rendered by Susan Nanning-Sorenson, offers abundant rewards. As Petra, Dana Lee Sorman is a stand-out. And Charles J. Trieloff II’s scenic design is both striking and resourceful.