During the solstice in Scandinavia, the sun does not set for days at a time. Dating back to pagan tradition, Midsummer festivities are notoriously raucous social-more-thwarting revelry. Against this ripe backdrop in turn-of-the-century Sweden, A Little Night Music celebrates the romantic foibles of Desiree Armfeldt and friends over one eventful extended sunset.Stephen Sondheim and the original director Harold Prince “always wanted to do a musical that dealt with love and lovers and mismatched partners...love and foolishness.” While looking for material to adapt into a romantic operetta, they found their own perfect match in the Ingmar Bergman film Smiles of a Summer Night. “Bergman achieves one of the few classics of carnal comedy,” wrote renowned film critic Pauline Kael, “a tragicomic chase and roundelay that raises boudoir farce to elegance and lyric poetry.” While Sondheim and book writer Hugh Wheeler retraced the romantic runarounds of the film’s story, they sweetened Bergman’s cynicism, allowing “the darkness to peep through a whipped-cream surface. Whipped cream with knives.”
- from
The Huntingdon Theatre websiteFrom its debut in 1973, A Little Night Music was warmly received by the critics and reviewers, and has been revived myriad times since - the show is often cited as one of Sondheim's finest works. Conceived as a sort of operetta, virtually all of the music is, unusually, written in waltz (three-quarter) time - and from its magnificent score, a legendary showbiz standard (and pop hit) was born. But first, on with the show...
[Other notable versions of this remarkable number include Elaine Stritch, Dame Cleo Laine, Dame Sian Phillips, and even Margaret Hamilton(!) - but my fave is the original by Hermione Gingold (no video for that, unfortunately)]And finally... The number that gained a life all of its own - probably Sondheim's most recognised and famous song. It has been covered by just about everyone in the business, including Frank Sinatra, Judy Collins (whose version was a huge hit in 1975), MegaBabs, Sarah Vaughan, Bing Crosby, Julie Andrews, Lou Rawls, Shirley Bassey, Blossom Dearie, Jack Jones, Johnny Mathis, Cleo Laine, Rosemary Clooney, Maria Friedman, Ruthie Henshall, Michael Ball, Glenn Close, the Tiger Lilies and even Dame Edna Everage (and many, many more besides). However, this is the lady for whom it was written:
Other notable "Desirees" include Elizabeth Taylor, Jean Simmons, Sally Ann Howes, Dorothy Tutin, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Juliet Stevenson, Bernadette Peters and Judi Dench]We went to see it back in (gulp!) 2009 - at the "home" of many a successful Sondheim production the Menier Chocolate Factory - starring Maureen Lipman as Madame Armfeldt, Hannah Waddingham as Desiree and Alexander Hanson as Frederik, and loved it.
A Little Night Music is quite simply magnificent, and deservedly revered as a classic.
All you need to know about the show is on the Everything Sondheim site.
RIP, Stephen Joshua Sondheim (22nd March 1930 – 26th November 2021)
[One of a series of tributes I will be posting to Mr Sondheim this week.]
Previous "Sondheim of the Day" entries: