Why have just one love triangle in a musical when you could quite feasibly have five? In a venue a tad too echoey to fully appreciate all of the more rapidly delivered lyrics in this Sondheim musical, this production captures a fairly complex storyline with flair and nuance. There’s a lot going on, which if anything concentrates the mind, while songs from the show that sometimes make appearances in musical theatre concerts, such as ‘The Miller’s Son’, ‘A Weekend in the Country’ and, of course, ‘Send in the Clowns’ are heard in context.
This being a student production, everyone is more or less in the same age bracket, which meant I found myself looking at the programme in the five-minute interval (yes, that’s all we were given) to look at who is whom. Michaela Elise Fox’s Madam Armfeldt, the matriarch of the show, is spared that awful fake gait that older people are still too often portrayed with on stage, by being immobile. On paper, it reads a bit like Aspects of Love, in which ‘everyone’ sleeps with ‘everyone else’ – I oversimplify, but not by much. But there’s more to A Little Night Music than that, with advice being passed down by Madam Armfeldt to her granddaughter Fredrika (a suitably fresh-faced Tyler Ramsay) and young Henrik (Marty Pascall) feeling utterly powerless and disrespected. To be fair to him, I couldn’t work out for the life of me why he was being laughed at so much either.
The set is rather threadbare, which allows for very swift scene changes, with Madam Armfeldt’s large country house looking as sparse as anyone else’s. The stage was so unencumbered that everyone Armfeldt had invited for ‘A Weekend in the Country’ – and others that, strictly speaking, weren’t invited, but showed up anyway – apparently had dinner without a dinner table. Still, the production is lusher than most Fringe shows. A full-length Stephen Sondheim musical is pulled off with flair and confidence in this absorbing and skilled production.
Review by Chris Omaweng
Stephen Sondheim’s A Little Night Music explores the tangled web of affairs centred around actress Desirée Armfeldt and the married men who love her: a lawyer by the name of Fredrik Egerman and the Count Carl-Magnus Malcolm. Transporting audiences to the enchanting setting of 1900s Sweden and directed by Tom Cooper, this musical weaves a tale of love, longing and laughter.
A Little Night Music is full of witty and moving movements of adoration, regret and desire. With Sondheim’s timeless score, including ‘Send in the Clowns’, audiences are drawn into a tale of forbidden passions, comedic misunderstandings, and ultimately, the pursuit of true happiness.
CAST
Malla Anderseen – Selina Savijoki
Petra Erlanson – Cate Brooks
Frid Linquist – Kejie Wang
Osa Normstrom – Kaiyi Xu
Agnetha Segstrom – Jadon Simone Trelour
Madam Armfeldt – Michaela Elise Fox
Desirée Armfeldt – Anna Toogood
Frederika Armfeldt – Tyler Ramsay
Frederik Egerman – Shane Ferris
Anne Egerman – Emi Kitagawa
Henrik Egerman – Marty Pascall
Count Carl-Magnus Malcolm – David Joseph Healy
Countess Charlotte Malcolm – Jen Cassidy
CREATIVE TEAM
Director – Tom Cooper
Musical Directors – Hudson Crowe, Noah Pott
Choreographer – Jane McMurtrie
Set and Costume Designer – Claire Halleran
Lighting Designer – Simon Hayes
Sound Designer – Corey Jackson
Musical Supervisor – David Higham
Vocal Coach – Gordon Adams
Spoken Voice Support – Susan Worsfold
Dialect Coach – Hilary Jones
Intimacy Coordinator – Sharon McKay
Assistant Director – Jen Cassidy
Assistant Vocal Coach – Marty Pascall
Dance Captain – Michaela Elise Fox
Royal Conservatoire of Scotland presents
A LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC
Suggested by a Film by Ingmar Bergman
Originally Produced and Directed on Broadway by Harold Prince
Music Hall, Assembly Rooms
2 to 25 August 2024
