A Little Night Music
Ogunquit Playhouse, Ogunquit, ME, July 18-August 17, 2024
Reviewed by John Amodeo
One of Stephen Sondheim’s most beautiful works is his 1973 musical A Little Night Music with book by Hugh Wheeler and originally produced and directed by Harold Prince. Inspired by the1955 Ingmar Bergman film Smiles of a Summer Night, this musical involves three generations of Armfeldt women, three mismatched couples, and three smiles. This triptych of triptychs inspired Sondheim to compose an entire score in 3/4 time, or variations thereof, which resulted in one of the most breathtakingly romantic scores ever written, and that’s saying something considering that Sondheim isn’t known for unabashed romance. Sondheim’s score, Wheeler’s book, and Prince’s original direction take our three hapless couples on a perilous journey toward the most elusive of places, true love.
This is one of Sondheim’s most popular musicals, and it has been produced frequently in regional and local theaters. It has also enjoyed a celebrated 2009 Broadway revival that starred Catherine Zeta-Jones as Desiree Armfeldt and Angela Lansbury as her mother, Madame Armfeldt. Less than two months ago, Lincoln Center presented a concert production of the show with the 50-piece St. Luke’s Orchestra conducted by Jonathan Tunick, the original arranger of its score. If you are interested in seeing this beguiling musical, the Ogunquit Playhouse in Ogunquit, ME is presenting a superb production through Saturday, August 17.
The Ogunquit Playhouse production is under the brilliant direction of Broadway veteran Hunter Foster (Broadway veteran Sutton Foster’s brother). Foster has highlighted the sardonic wit of the libretto and lyrics by allowing his actors to bring out the humor in the piece, however broadly, to provide balance to the characters’ jaded pessimism or foolhardy optimism. This enabled them to laugh at one another, and more importantly at themselves, so that we may laugh along with them.
Foster also found the heart in this show; it is there to be found, but not everyone has mined as deeply as he has. One of the ways he did this was to feature the third generation of Armfeldt women. One of them is Fredrika, Desiree’s 13-year-old daughter, played charmingly by Lily Philbrook. She, alone on stage at a grand piano, played the first note and the last note of the show, which told us that this is really her story. Throughout, Fredrika was watching, not always passively and with great anticipation, the three older couples and wondering how their stories would end, because that would have a profound impact on her future.
First, we were introduced to Fredrik and Anne Egerman, who have a May-December relationship; they have been married for 11 months but have not consummated their marriage. As the middle-aged lawyer Fredrik, Mike McGowan (Broadway: The Book of Mormon, The Producers) cut a handsome figure and wrapped his warm baritone voice around Sondheim’s melodies like a comfort blanket. More than that, he understood Fredrik’s midlife crisis that led to his unsatisfying marriage to 18-year-old Anne, a dim but pretty debutante. She was played with delightful hilarity by Lauren Maria Medina, who ran her coloratura soprano up and down the scales with incredible ease. It was a joy to watch and listen to her bubbly enthusiasm as she flitted mindlessly between characters far smarter yet far less happy than her.
The last side of this triangle, which continued the motif of threes, was Fredrik’s teenage son Henrik who was about to enter a seminary but was also haunted by his unrequited love for his new stepmother, Anne. Steven Telsey (Broadway: Harmony, National Tour: The Book of Mormon), who you just want to go up onto the stage and hug, played Henrik with perfectly dour melancholy.
Even in this romantic score Sondheim didn’t let his singers off easily, and we became aware of that at the start when McGowan, Telsey, and Medina were given consecutive solos, “Now,” “Later,” and “Soon,” respectively. They were subsequently weaved together like a Bach three-part invention (again, the motif of threes). McGowan, Telsey, and Medina soared in their solos and astounded in their trio as they sang around, up, and over one another. Telsey was possibly the first ever to hit that impossibly high note in “Later” effortlessly and without strain. To prove this point, Telsey held the note far longer than it was written to our utter astonishment and delight. It was thrilling.
Our next unhappy couple consisted of Count Carl-Magnus Malcolm, a dragoon in the Swedish military, and his wife Countess Charlotte Malcolm. Charlotte is deeply unhappy, in large part, because she was treated trivially by her husband, but she battled her demons with a rapier wit. She often had the best lines in the show. She was played by Lora Lee Gayer (Broadway: Follies, Doctor Zhivago). She may have lacked subtlety, but she served her bon mots with deadpan determination. Nik Walker played Carl-Magnus with such delicious buffoonery that we believed that he was the only one who didn’t know the joke was on him. Carl-Magnus was having an adulterous affair with the famed leading lady of national theater Desiree Armfeldt, much to the chagrin of his wife and also of Fredrik, who had had an affair with Desiree many years ago and was looking to rekindle it. Walker imbued Carl-Magnus with comic self-absorbed indignation that made his entrances instantly hilarious. Walker also possessed a deeply resonant baritone that blended beautifully with McGowan’s, which made their duet “The Woman Was Perfection,” well, perfection.
As the central character Desiree Armfeldt, around whom this foolhardy maelstrom revolves, Julia Murney (Broadway: Elphaba in Wicked, Off-Broadway: Queenie in The Wild Party) was simply stunning. She was honest, rational, cool-headed, and thanks to Foster’s direction, disarmingly funny. Her “Send in the Clowns” was heartbreaking and will linger long after the show ended. Murney and McGowen had a palpable chemistry that paid big dividends in the final scene. Film and stage luminary Kathleen Turner (Broadway: Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, Film: Body Heat) aptly played the matriarch, Madame Armfeldt, who, for better or worse, held a mirror up to the other characters to expose them for the fools that they were. Turner delivered her lines with glib authority, and yet revealed a vulnerability that took us by surprise in the 11th hour and pulled the entire show into a cohesive whole.
As commentary on the vagaries of the upper classes, the character Petra, Anne’s maid, was lusciously lascivious and showed a free-spirited abandon that her buttoned-up employers and their companions lacked. Gianna Yanelli was just about the best Petra you’ll ever see, and she absolutely stole the show when she made a tour de force of “The Miller’s Son.” The Quintet, who served as a Greek chorus with their sardonic observations of the main characters, was beautifully sung by Jennifer Allen, Colin Anderson, Whitney Daniels, Lianne Marie Dobbs, and Michael Halling. Foster dressed them as servants, a unique choice that added fuel to their fiery commentary.
When this talented cast came together as a complete company in the Act I closing number, “A Weekend in the Country,” the richness of sound, the glorious blend of well-trained voices, the well-orchestrated and executed choreography, and the sumptuous symphonic structure of the piece itself came together to form a spectacular moment of theater. It sent the audience out into the intermission aching to get back into the theater to see how all of this muddle would resolve.
For a resort-town regional theater, the Ogunquit Playhouse managed to pull out all the stops with its production values. A period piece like this, which takes place at the turn of the 20th century, can succeed or fail depending on the quality of the costumes, wigs, and sets. The Ogunquit Playhouse seemed to spin gold out of straw with perfect period wigs designed by Roxanne de Luna and lavish costumes by Hunter Kaczorowski—especially those for Desiree, Charlotte, and Anne—with no expense spared. The sets by Riw Rackkulchon perfectly depicted urban elegance in Act I and country gentry affluence in Act II, especially with the creation of a complete birch forest that parted and joined in a pas de deux to frame or screen the action as needed. Choreographer Shannon Lewis used the stage’s turntable deftly, with set pieces moving together or in opposing direction as if they were dancing themselves. She weaved the cast on and off the turntable, negotiating the rotating set pieces with such grace that you were barely aware the set was turning.
This all comes back to director Hunter Foster’s vision. The characters in Bergman’s story seek a coherent existence. Foster brought a sense of apt coherence to A Little Night Music that snapped the intricate plot into clarity so that the audience might revel in the proceedings and leave with a full heart.
A Little Night Music runs at the Ogunquit Playhouse, 10 Main Street, Ogunquit, ME through August 17, 2024. Tickets: $56-$155. For tickets, call 207.646.5511 or visit www.ogunquitplayhouse.org
