A Little Night Music review: Merle Dandridge leads a lush production of Sondheim's melancholy farce
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"I should never have flirted with rescue when I had no intention of being saved."
Near the climax of A Little Night Music, now playing through May 28 at the Pasadena Playhouse, Fredrik Egerman (Michael Hayden) utters these words with a sense of resignation as he lets the love and the life he craves slip through his fingers once more. It encapsulates this bittersweet farce and the genius that is Hugh Wheeler's wistful book against the waltz-time of one of Stephen Sondheim's finest scores.
Courtesy Pasadena Playhouse Michael Hayden and Merle Dandridge in 'A Little Night Music'
Continuing their six-month Sondheim festival, which launched with a production of Sunday in the Park With George, the Pasadena Playhouse mounts another one of Sondheim's most melodically (and emotionally) complex works — and for all of the tribute paid to the maestro of the American theater in Sunday, they manage to exceed themselves here. Particularly because the Playhouse focuses more on the text itself rather than tip-toeing through with reverence. Once again, they employ a full orchestra to deliver the lush score with all its attendant glory.
Merle Dandridge is luminous as Desiree Armfeldt, the actress still yearning for the romantic connection she shared with Fredrik some 14 years ago. When Fredrik and his very young wife, Anne (Kaley Ann Voorhees), turn up at one of Desiree's shows, she realizes she wants to win Fredrik back — if she can evade the jealousy of her current lover, Count Carl-Magnus Malcom (Ryan Silverman) and his embittered wife, Charlotte (Sarah Uriarte Berry).
Courtesy Pasadena Playhouse The cast of 'A Little Night Music'
Based on Ingmar Bergman's 1955 film Smiles of a Summer Night, A Little Night Music is both a dizzyingly romantic operetta and a farcical commentary on the fools that love and desire make of us all. Dandridge leads a stellar cast. The ensemble's only weak members are Chase Del Rey as Henrik, who leans too heavily into the religious-minded boy's self-seriousness and misses the fun, and Jodi Long as Madame Armfeldt, bringing a one-note forced humor to a role generally reserved for grande dames of the theater that far exceed her stature; and even that is nit-picking.
Though the role of Desiree was written for the non-singer Glynis Johns, Dandridge finds ways to inject her powerful voice into the score, bringing Desiree's longing and tempestuousness into every note. Her self-assurance oozes from every pore, providing an effective mask for the more vulnerable parts of herself that she finally exposes in the second act. Hayden is her perfect foil as Fredrik, a man so desperate to renew his youth that he's missed out on the liberation of middle age. They craft a believable relationship that tugs at the heartstrings amidst the folly of those around them.
In every moment, Dandridge holds the audience in the palm of her hand, leaving us breathless with anticipation for the moment we might behold her next. Countless artists have covered "Send In the Clowns," Sondheim's most popular song, but Dandridge performs it not only as if we're hearing it for the first time — but as if she is realizing these words and the irony of her life only in this moment.
Courtesy Pasadena Playhouse Ryan Silverman in 'A Little Night Music'
Silverman is a force as Carl-Magnus, an egotistical maniac so self-obsessed he could give Beauty and the Beast's Gaston a run for his money. He infuses the role with a himbo energy that makes even his slightest strut across the stage a comedic banquet for the audience. As his better half Charlotte, Berry is divinely amusing and heartbreaking all at once. Her take on "Every Day a Little Death" is masterful, as if she were holding a sour candy in her mouth while still hitting every note with sparkling acuity. Charlotte is cynical, but she's also trapped, enamored of her husband's physical attributes and bedroom abilities. Berry captures Charlotte's hapless paradox with a bittersweet empathy that makes her a standout amongst the cast.
Attention must also be paid to Kaley Ann Vorhees' Anne and Ruby Lewis' Petra. Vorhees has the challenging task of asking us to align with her silly, petrified wife — a woman who is still such a child that she remains a virgin 11 months into her marriage. But Vorhees perfectly calibrates Anne's youth, marked by frequent cascades of giggles, with a longing to grow up and understand her place in this world of adult liaisons. When she is finally loosed to skip through the forest in Act II, it's with an infectious abandon.
Courtesy Pasadena Playhouse Chase Del Rey and Kaley Ann Vorhees in 'A Little Night Music'
Lewis could easily give a one-note performance as the bawdy and buxom chamber maid Petra. But she offers up a sassy, self-aware version instead, one fully rounded out by her mesmerizing performance of "The Miller's Sonm" detailing her empowered insistence on sowing her wild oats before opting for a life of dull security.
A Little Night Music is both a sex romp and a parable of aging, regret, and desire. David Lee's direction leans more heavily into the latter, and the entire proceedings could use a touch more horniness (the double entendres of Henrik's cello playing and connotations of "Every Day A Little Death" are ignored nearly entirely).
Lee's staging is adept and refreshing, never cluttering the stage with too many actors on top of each other, but instead giving them a sprawling playing space in Wilson Chin's enchanting set. Jared A. Sayeg's lighting ties the whole thing together — warm oranges, purples, and pinks of the long Scandinavian summer nights lending a fairy-tale quality to the second act before giving way to the realities of the inky, brief night.
Courtesy Pasadena Playhouse Michael Hayden and Sarah Uriarte Berry in 'A Little Night Music'
A Little Night Music is a peculiar story in that nothing goes right, which results in everyone getting what they want. Rather than pure sex farce, it digs into the foibles, insecurities, and recriminations of desire — the ways that age and experience can wear us down, only for love to win out in the end.
In some ways, it's Sondheim's most optimistic and romantic work, a repudiation of the loneliness at the heart of works such as Company, Sunday in the Park with George, and Sweeney Todd. For better or worse, the characters in this world choose pleasures of the flesh and needs of the heart over all else. This production underscores Night Music's melancholy heart, the bittersweet nature of the agonies of love, and the ironic fact that sometimes it takes everything going wrong to open our eyes to what's right. Even if you have no intention of being saved, sometimes rescue comes all the same. Pasadena Playhouse needn't send in the clowns; they're already here. GRADE: A
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