If the title “A Little Night Music” sounds like a nod to old-world Europe, that may be because it is a direct translation of the title of Mozartap Serenade No. 13. But don’t be fooled. Stephen Sondheim’s musical with a book by Hugh Wheeler made its first appearance on Broadway in 1973, and the show gently teases that roiling time period’s tensions around love, desire and sex even while setting its vexed couples’ shenanigans in a decidedly bygone era.
Director Chris Coleman has found his groove in the musical’s tart grasp of the old and the new, of what endures and what continues to gnaw at us. Coleman, the artistic producing director of the Denver Center Theatre Company, appears attracted to works that deliver the elegance of yore yet nuzzle the ongoing concerns of now. In the recent past, he’s taken the reins of “Anna Karenina” and “Much Ado About Nothing” (set in 1930s Italy).
In this opening production of the new season, he makes a diabolically complex musical alluring, crafting a production that is often lush (costumes by Kevin Copenhaver; set design by Robert Mark Morgan) and as easy to follow as a slightly screwball comedy.
A quintet enters at the outset. Their singing of “Night Waltz” is pert and muscular. Their rich voices overlap and vie in a song whose refrain — “Remember…” — sounds like the nudge of lovers who’ve shared much but may not recall those memories in quite the same way.
The song gives way to waltzing. (Candy Brown’s delicate choreography also injects the classical with the contemporary.) The waltzing gives way to a prologue reiterating the theme of newness and, if not of growing up, at least of growing older.
Watching the ensuing romantic entanglements from an archway above are Madame Armfeldt (Leslie Alexander) and her young granddaughter, Fredrika (alternates Sydney D’Angelo and Sophia Dotson). Madame’s daughter, Desiree (Soara-Joye Ross), has left Fredrika in the care of her mother while she tours. An actor, Desiree’s admirers include Count Carl-Magnus Malcolm (Zachary James) though not his wife, Charlotte (Alexis Gordon).
“The summer night smiles three times,” Madame tells her wise-beyond-her-years granddaughter. “The first smiles at the young, who know nothing. The second, at the fools who know too little… And the third at the old who know too much.”
Much that takes place in “A Little Night Music” unfolds in the realm of the foolish, where the audience — like grandmother and child — can gaze upon the actors and their actions and feel a mix of knowingness and pity. By the musical’s end, the superiority of pity is likely to turn into sympathy if not empathy for these lovers, often too clueless to cop to their truer affections, but also to their fears of growing older, their fear — dare we say? — of actually becoming wiser.
And so, a stepmother lounges with her stepson, who is very nearly her same age. Is Anne’s comfort with Henrik (Sam Primack) flirtatious? Henrik’s nervousness suggests so, even if he doesn’t think it is. And Anne (Sydney Chow) might be even more unaware of what appears to be going on between them. When Anne’s husband, Fredrik arrives we are even more certain of the wrinkles yet to come.
“A Little Night Music” is a psychoanalytic musical (the book is based on the 1955 movie “Smiles of a Summer Night” by director Ingmar Bergman) in which the subconscious has more than a walk-on role.
Fredrik (Edward Staudenmayer) is very much his wife’s senior, and they have yet to consummate their marriage. Itap been two years and he’s pent up (“Now,” a clever song that, with his alternating fantasies of seduction and ravishment, has grown slightly more problematic over the years). Anne knows she should feel differently but isn’t sure why she doesn’t. Even so, she promises “Soon.” For his part, Henrik (“Later”) teeters on the cusp of pining and getting.
As the three complete their fractured trio, Fredrik drifts off into a nap. He and Anne are headed later to the theater where Desiree is a headliner. “Desiree” he whispers in his sleep, clutching a pillow. At the theater (Coleman makes clever use of the Wolfe Theatre’s orchestra seats), Desiree locks eyes with her former lover. Ah-hah.
Whatap to become of Anne and Fredrik now that Desiree is in the picture and Henrik is aching for, well, he’s a little slow to know for what? Along the way to resolution, another couple enters the fray: the Count and Countess Malcolm. Gordon is especially charming as Countess Malcolm, a wife who thinks enduring their husband’s infidelity is the lot of wives and tells Anne as much.
The romantic entanglements get very knotty — and, yes, naughty. And “A Little Night Music” pulls off its three card monte. For theatergoers who’ve never seen this Sondheim classic, it becomes tricky to know which lovers will wind up together.
What is not surprising, but welcome, is Ross’s rendition of the movie’s hit song, “Send in the Clowns.” It is a showstopper if not a heartstopper. As soon as Desiree poses to Fredrik wearily and wonderfully “Isn’t it rich?” the show goes from offering nice and nimble pleasure to being something more profound.
And then, with a genius that is pure Sondheim, that wealth of bittersweet emotion is one-upped by the maid Petra (Cate Hayman in a star turn) singing the wonderfully carnal “The Miller’s Son.” That these two numbers — one so deeply romantic, the other so sex-positive — are cheek-by-jowl is rich, indeed.
“A Little Night Music”
Music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim. Book by Hugh Wheeler. Orchestrations by Jonathan Tunick. Directed by Chris Coleman. Featuring Sydney Chow, Edward Staundenmayer, Soara-Joye Ross, Sam Primack, Zachary James, Alexis Gordon, Cate Hayman, Leslie Alexander, Sydney D’Angelo and Sophia Dotson. At the Wolfe Theatre in the Helen Bonfils Theatre Complex, 14th and Curtis streets, through Oct. 1. For tickets and info: denvercenter.org or 303-893-4100.
