A Little Night Music

A few weeks ago I saw A Little Night Music with Catherine Zeta-Jones and although Angela Lansbury was out with laryngitis, I enjoyed it immensely. CZJ in particular was very, very good and I thought she really did deserve the Tony.

This afternoon I saw it again with Bernadette Peters and Elaine Stritch. First of all, although Bernadette Peters is amazing, I think at 62 she's a bit too old to play Desiree. There's even a line where Anne asks how old she is and quotes "Forty...perhaps even fifty" and Fredrik replies that she's not quite that old. Hmm.

Second of all, Elaine Stritch is a mess in this show. I hate to badmouth any actor, especially one so experienced in Sondheim's work, but it's true. She had a strong start playing the sassy old grandmother, but completely fell apart when singing "Liaisons". (By the way, if you listen to the cast recording with Angela Lansbury, it's really amusing to hear Mrs. Potts sing about affairs with various royals.) After the first verse, she forgot almost every line and the conductor was saying them. But of course, the woman is 84 years old and couldn't hear a thing he was saying, so eventually he had to shout them out at her. And his shouting out the first line wasn't good enough...he actually had to say every single line for most of the song. A nameless acquaintance of mine involved in the production says this happens every night. If it only happened at this one performance, it would be okay. But if it happens every night, it's just not acceptable. When I go to a Broadway show I expect the actors to actually know their lines. (When I go to a high school show, for that matter, I expect the actors to actually know their lines.) If you can't manage that, there needs to be either a teleprompter or someone more able playing the part.

A juicy fact about Ms Stritch...she's apparently a real piece of work in real life.

Anyway, other than that the cast was the same and they're all great. Alexander Hanson, who I also saw in this production in London, was pretty much made for the role and Leigh Ann Larkin really stood out as Petra the maid. My only complaint about Bernadette Peters other than the difference in age between her and the character is that she rushed some lines, causing some words to run together. She knew it, too, because she went back and resaid a couple of lines. I think she might have been trying too hard to sell "Send in the Clowns" but it was still a really strong performance.