Praise then darkness, and creation unfinished

Thursday night, cattitude and I saw the current Broadway revival of A Little Night Music, starring Bernadette Peters and Elaine Strich (and Alexander Hanson, but it was Strich and Peters that made me want to see this).

It was as good as I'd expected, which is very: I'm a Sondheim fan, but had never seen this show, only listened to the cast album. Sondheim's songs are excellent, but they gain from the context of the rest of the show). I'd wanted to see Elaine Strich act since we saw her one-woman show Elaine Strich at Liberty a couple of years ago, and Bernadette Peters is as good as I'd heard. (I suspect I've seen her before, but I'm not sure.) Her "Send in the Clowns" was almost heart-breaking, as well as technically very good: a bit of my brain was detached enough to notice the skill involved in putting those pauses, as if to catch her breath, in without ever actually losing her place.

We had a very good time; this was worth waiting for. I continue to be impressed that Strich and Peters are the replacement cast; this is the production that originally had Angela Lansbury and Catherine Zeta-Jones. (There aren't enough good roles for older women, or maybe there aren't enough directors and producers willing to put on those plays.)

Strich, as Madame Armfeldt, has only one song to herself, "Liaisons," which she did well. And I caught on one bit of the lyric, and wondered if it was meant as characterization: Mme. Armfeldt, reminiscing about her past, sings about having been the mistress of the King of Belgium. The play is set "at the turn of the last century," or around 1900; the timing suggests that this was likely Leopold II, the infamous creator and ruler of the Congo Free State. The musical is about (heterosexual) romantic/sexual relationships, and there's definitely political text there (for example, Count Carl-Magnus's jealousy and treatment of his wife and his mistress); I don't know whether Sondheim or Hugh Wheeler, who wrote the book, thought about the implications of "In the palace of the king of the Belgians," rather than picking it for scansion. But it sheds a less flattering light Mme. Armfeldt, though I don't know how much the king's mistress would plausibly have known about goings-on in the Congo around 1870. (I can imagine her having learned about it years later, been glad to no longer be involved with him, but also still glad of the villa and money he gave her, and determined to play up the romance or status of a king, any king.

The choreography is also very good, both larger things like the way Frederika is mostly excluded by the adults in the opening waltz, and small things like the way several of the actors mime riding a train or bus (a slight anachronism, perhaps, but it works). The Playbill lists an "associate choreographer," suggesting that at least some of the choreography is from the original Hal Prince production.

[I don't have a lot to say about the play as a play, except that it works; I'm glad not to be anywhere near anything like Count Carl-Magnus's possessiveness and double standards, or in the sort of milieu where that kind of thing is normative; and that I think it's technically a comedy.]

Wednesday evening, cattitude and I went (with L, and a bunch of other people who I don't think are on LJ) to the Broadway revival of Stephen Sondheim's Company. We had fun, and I was reminded that I haven't been getting out enough. (I may never be satisfied with my balancing between getting out and not running myself ragged.)

Most of our group were familiar with the show; I have the original cast album, and have played it fairly often. I also went to an amateur production some years ago (I think at St. Bartholemew's church), but don't remember much about it. Being a lot more familiar with the music than with the non-sung conversations and staging can be odd: I was surprised by some of the interactions between the characters, and know many of the lyrics well enough to have spotted a changed half-line in "You Could Drive a Person Crazy." There was one significant change from the 1970 version: "Marry Me a Little" was added to the show in the 1990s.

Either the performers need to enunciate better, or the instruments were played (or miked) too loud, maybe a bit of both. I suspect someone who didn't already know the music would have missed quite a bit, especially in the opening number (also called "Company"), where a lot of singing was covered by instrumental music. The woman playing Marta did a very good job with "Another Hundred People," one of my favorite Sondheim songs. [I didn't keep the Playbill, trying to avoid clutter, and now I'm wishing I had; that's one reason this isn't really a review.] Raul Esparza is a good Bobby (not an easy role to act)and Barbara Walsh is a good Joanne, a difficult role because Elaine Strich made it, and especially the song "Ladies Who Lunch," so much her own in the original production and afterwards. Unfortunately, the woman playing Amy couldn't quite handle the patter-song speed of "Not Getting Married." (There were a couple of substitutions the night we saw the show, and I don't remember whether this was one of them.)

I meant to write about the Japanese production of Pacific Overtures when I saw it--but that was the same day as the job interview, and I was rather overwhelmed.

There is something surreal about the familiar tunes, sung in a foreign language, with Sondheim's clever, complex, multi-rhymed words projected overhead.

I'd say "go see it" but the company has gone back to Japan; they did five performances in New York, and will be doing five in Washington later in the summer, and that's it. The show ended its run in Japan a while ago--but Sondheim was there for the last two shows, and decided that it should come to the US.