A Little Night Music review – Opera North brings musical gains but dramatic loss
almost 3 years in The guardian
Leeds PlayhouseThe new staging of Sondheim’s musical is a delicious and sweet treat, but with the songs rendered so beautifully, something of the work’s psychological edge is lost
Stephen Sondheim’s 1973 show, based on an Ingmar Bergman film about sexual intrigues in a duskless Swedish summer, includes a joke about bad opera singing. Ex-lovers recall: “The tenor on the boat that we chartered / belching The Bartered Bride.” Paradoxically, this put-down is sung with impeccable pitch and enunciation, in Opera North’s co-production with Leeds Playhouse, a cultural case of Leeds united.
As the most operetta-ish of Sondheim’s shows, A Little Night Music has been (with the most operatic, Sweeney Todd) evidence for the view that Sondheim marries Broadway with the opera house. (Night Music’s first three New York revivals were operatic not theatrical.) Continue reading...
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