The Ill-Made Night

What: A Little Night Music
Where: Opera Theatre of St. Louis
When: through June 19, 2010

One sign of a great play is that it can survive and even succeed despite ill-conceived artistic choices. As the current production by Opera Theatre clearly demonstrates, A Little Night Music is a great play. Despite imposed and irrelevant design decisions by fashion designer and television personality Isaac Mizrahi, Hugh Wheeler's smart dialog and Stephen Sondheim's superbly crafted score emerge pretty much intact.

My principal complaint with the production is that Mizrahi has decided that it's essentially Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream with a Sondheim score. “For years”, he write in his director's notes, “I have wanted to present A Little night Music like Shakespeare's summer farce with music, with misguided lovers running through the forest on one enchanted summer night.” Unfortunately the worlds of Shakespeare's farce and Hugh Wheeler's dramatic comedy have nothing in common to speak of. Magic and fairies are at the core of Shakespeare. In Wheeler they're non-existent. The folly in A Little Night Music is entirely the work of flawed characters trying to be what they aren't rather than of sprites with spells and potions.

Yes, much of the second act (but none of the first) of Night Music takes place out of doors on midsummer's eve, but the location is the well-manicured lawn of a mansion, not a magical wood. And that location has meaning, in part, because it contrasts with the interiors of the first act. To set the entire thing, as Mizrahi has, in what he describes as an “enchanted spot in the forest” is to fundamentally distort that relationship. The look of the show feels imposed and serves to detract from the play rather than enhance it.

That said, I have to admit that Mizrahi the director serves the material far better than Mizrahi the designer. With the possible exception of the Act I finale, in which a steady stream of irrelevant action by the non-canonical “Swedish fairies” constantly threatens to upstage the brilliant score, most of the staging and interpretation choices make sense. Casting choices are also quite good. I was especially taken with the fact that while the younger roles were all filled by classically trained singers, the older roles – Frederik, Desiree and Madame Armfeldt – were all assigned to actors from the legitimate theatre. The contrast in vocal styles worked quite well, especially during spoken dialog.

Ron Raines, with substantial credits on both the theatrical and operatic stages, is perhaps the ideal Frederik Egerman. His warm and solid baritone easily handles Sondheim's often-tricky score and his acting perfectly captures Frederik's wry humor. Amy Irving is a good match for him dramatically but, at least on opening night, she seemed unable to project vocally past the first few rows and often failed to sing through the ends of phrases (which, in all fairness, is not as easy as you might think). Still, it's a generally fine performance that serves the character and the production well.

Siân Phillips is a compelling Madame Armfeldt and her scenes with soprano Vivian Krich-Brinton as granddaughter Frederika are charming. Mezzo Candra Savage is a standout as the free-spirited Petra, making the most of “The Miller's Son”. The song is crucial, coming at exactly the point in the action when a more earthy perspective is needed, and Ms. Savage's performance is everything one could hope for.

Baritones Lee Gregory and Christopher Dylan Herbert sound great as the pompous Count Carl-Magnus and angst-ridden Henrik but their performances tend to come just a bit too close to exaggeration. Ditto for mezzo Erin Holland as the Count's caustically self-aware wife Charlotte. I'm inclined to chalk that up to Mizrahi's direction rather than actor choices, though, since it's so consistent.

There's more fine singing from the quintet that comments on the action throughout the play. Aaron Agulay, Lauren Jelenovich, Corinne Winters, Mark Van Arsdale and Laura Wilde are the vocalists. They all deserve applause, as does soprano Amanda Squitieri as the eternally virginal Anne.

Applause as well for the Opera Theatre orchestra under Stephen Lord, navigating Sondheim's sometimes-complex score with ease. There were a few rough spots on opening night, especially during counterpoint-laden numbers like “Now / Later / Soon”, but I'd expect those to disappear with time.

When all is said and done, Opera Theatre's A Little Night Music is well worth seeing if only because any production of this wonderful piece is well worth seeing. Musically, the production is top notch, after all, and the visual design, while sometimes annoying, is ignorable. If you're a Sondheim fan you won't want to miss it.

A Little Night Music runs through June 19th at the Loretto-Hilton Center on the Webster University campus. For more information, you may call 314-961-0644 or visit opera-stl.org.