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.