Top Five Songs: A Little Night Music

A Little Night Music has an exquisite score.  It’s meticulous, sumptuous, heartfelt, clever, and funny, and it’s one that pops up to say, “Hey, what about me?” any time I start thinking another Sondheim score is my favorite (not that I’m saying it is my favorite, just that it keeps the competition fierce.)  If I could only have five songs from this show, here’s what I’d choose.

(Pictures are from assorted productions.)

“Now” – The whole “Now / Later / Soon” sequence is fabulous, but you can’t beat Fredrik’s intro.  This fussy, pedantic number, which weighs the pros and cons of ravishing his young wife, is a riot.  It establishes Fredrik and his situation with Anne in a marvelously entertaining manner.

Best line:  “In view of her penchant / For something romantic, / De Sade is too trenchant / And Dickens too frantic, / And Stendahl would ruin / The plan of attack, / As there isn’t much blue in / ‘The Red and the Black.’”

“In Praise of Women” – Carl-Magnus might be my favorite character; this self-important, deluded philanderer is so amusing.  It’s fun to hear his mental gymnastics as he tries to quell his suspicions that his mistress is cheating on him, and I love his condescending “praise of women.”

Best line:  “God knows the foolishness about them, / But if one had to live without them, / The world would surely be a poorer, / If purer, / Place.”

“Every Day a Little Death” – Anne and Charlotte make a good team, since Anne is so naïve and Charlotte is so cynical.  I really like Anne’s wake-up call here as Charlotte opens her eyes to the reality of men, marriage, and infidelity.  The round is gorgeous, and Charlotte’s internal struggle between love and scorn is terrifically compelling.

Best line:  “He smiles sweetly, / Strokes my hair, / Says he misses me. / I would murder him right there, / But first I die.”

“Send in the Clowns” – Come on, I had to do this one!  Overexposure aside, it really is an excellent song, even more so in context.  Desiree’s quiet, wistful regret is beautifully heartbreaking, and I like the way she compares her ease onstage with her tumultuous real life.

Best line:  “Isn’t it rich? / Isn’t it queer, / Losing my timing this late / In my career? / And where are the clowns? / There ought to be clowns. / Well, maybe next year.”

“The Glamorous Life (Film Version)” – A bit of a cheat maybe, since this version isn’t in the show, but it’s so amazing that I couldn’t leave it out.  I adore everything about Fredrika’s ode to her famous mother, especially the stiff-upper-lip way she insists she’s okay with Desiree touring, gallivanting, and never being home.  The melody is so sweet and lovely, and the lyrics get me every time.

Best line:  “Ordinary mothers needn’t meet committees, / But ordinary mothers don’t get keys to cities. / No, ordinary mothers merely see their children all year, / Which is nothing – I hear. / But it does interfere / With the glamorous…”

A Little Night Music (1973)

 

More Sondheim – another regular contender for the top claim on my Sondheim affections.  Seriously, that man was in impeccable form all through the ‘70s and ‘80s.  This show mixes comedy and drama, exploring romantic and sexual relationships from all angles.

 

In some ways, A Little Night Music has elements of a bedroom farce.  Everyone is tangled in a veritable web of marriages, affairs, desires, and jealousies.  At the center of the confusion is Fredrik, a middle-aged lawyer married to a much younger woman, and Desiree, a famous, fading actress and Fredrik’s old flame.  When Fredrik brings his young virgin wife (it’s been 11 months – Fredrik is possibly growing the tiniest bit impatient) to the theatre, he reconnects with Desiree and jostles a domino-row of relationships.  Desiree has a homicidally-jealous lover with a bitter wife, and Fredrik’s adult son from a previous marriage has been receiving attentions from a frisky servant in between studying theology and trying to repress feelings for a stepmother a couple years younger than he is.

 

Needless to say, there’s a fine soup for trysts, deceptions, misunderstandings, arguments, and connections.  Much of the show is delightfully funny, especially when it comes to my favorite characters Carl-Magnus (Desiree’s lover) and his wife Charlotte.  He’s a vain, deluded philanderer, and even Desiree realizes that he’s good for little more than lovemaking.  Charlotte’s passive-aggressive sniping mixes hilariously well with his self-absorbed proclamations.  Then there’s Fredrik’s panicked son Henrik, utterly at a loss when it comes to his urges, and Fredrik’s wife Anne, who flits about nigh-oblivious to her husband’s frustration.  Fredrik himself has fantastic, contentious chemistry with Desiree.  They’re as likely to reminisce about old days as they are to laugh at one another’s present partners or quarrel over trifles.

 

Plenty of the songs provide major slices of humor.  I can’t say enough about “Now,” in which Fredrik logically works through his chances of seducing his wife.  At one point, having decided to take a direct approach to charming her, he ponders his options: “A, I could put on my nightshirt or sit / Disarmingly, B, in the nude. / That might be effective; / My body’s all right – / But not in perspective / And not in the light.”  Meanwhile, Carl-Magnus’s “In Praise of Women” is a mostly-losing attempt to convince himself that Desiree isn’t fooling around with Fredrik behind his back.  Fidelity, he insists, is “what a man expects from life. / Fidelity like mine to / Desiree / And Charlotte, my devoted wife.”

 

At the same time, though, some of music is remarkably dramatic.  The most notable is the gorgeous, heartbreaking “Send in the Clowns,” the show’s most well-known number.  However, it’s undeniably at its best within the context of the musical.  Desiree laments that she was too slow to reach out for love, noting, “Just when I’d stopped opening doors, / Finally knowing the one that I wanted was yours, / Making my entrance again with my usual flair, / Sure of my lines, / No one is there.” She looks at her life as a play and begs for the appearance of the clowns who show up to break the tension when the drama is too much to handle.

 

Warnings

 

Lots of sexual references and content, some swearing, and drinking.