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An awesome and ridiculous film that leaves you thrilled beyond the point of your natural endurance
2012
Theatre
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Always been a fan but never seen them live. I was ecstatic to be part of this epic event. WOW!
London,
Nicholas de Jongh's rating
Reader rating
Dir: Trevor Nunn, Lynne Page.
Cast: Hannah Waddingham, Maureen Lipman, Alexander Hanson, Kelly Price, Jessie Buckley, Kaisa Hammarlund, John Addison, Laura Armstrong
Description: Trevor Nunn directs Stephen Sondheim's romantic musical, following the affairs of four couples over a summer weekend. Based on the book by Hugh Wheeler.
Trains: Tube: Leicester Square 
Phone: 0870890 1101
Website: www.nimaxtheatres.com
Spot on: Maureen Lipman as a dyspeptic, wheelchair-bound Lady Bracknell of the north with Holly Hallam (left)
How risky the change from minor to major, as Cole Porter never said! I was ravished by Stephen Sondheim’s turn-of-the-20th century, midsummer-madness musical when Trevor Nunn’s production opened at the Menier Chocolate Factory last December. On transfer to the West End, A Little Night Music leaves me far less than enraptured.
While the Chocolate Factory’s exquisite version of Sunday in the Park with George expanded to magical effect when promoted to the West End, its latest import suffers from reduced impact. At least the eight-strong orchestra play with the same eloquent passion and clarity.
Nunn has changed very little and that maybe the trouble. There is no longer a strong sense of those emotional frustrations and simmering erotic tensions that reach their zenith in trystings and temptations on Madame Armfeldt’s country estate.
The elements of mordant comedy and covert melancholia (Every Day a Little Death) are understated. Only Maureen Lipman’s Madame, a wheel-chaired, wonderfully dyspeptic Lady Bracknell of the northern hemisphere achieves the right dynamism.
David Farley’s misty design, reliant upon a semi-circle of frosted glass doors that are later opened to reveal a vista of birch-trees, initially seems an unatmospheric, cut-price environment. Into its midst, the odd double-bed and upright seats are drawn under cover of darkness, while Hartley T A Kemp’s dusky lighting imparts an air of inspissated gloom into this highish-society milieu. Here, Hannah Waddingham’s rather too placid actress, Desiree Armfeldt, is torn between two husbands, neither of whom belong to her.
The machinations of the complex, bitter-sweet plot, fortified by Sondheim’s exquisite, springy score and based by a witty Hugh Wheeler on Ingmar Bergman’s atypically comic film, Smiles of a Summer Night, are now somewhat clogged in the first act. Alexander Hanson’s lawyer Fredrik, married to a frigid, teenage bride ( a shrill Jessie Buckley) while rekindling his long-lost passion for the delectable Desiree, ought to look and behave like a mature sex-symbol. But dressed up in a three-piece suit and a Trevor Nunn-style beard, he conveys full-on blandness not charisma.
Fortunately, Send in the Clowns, the musical’s great thematic and emotional linchpin, sung by Miss Waddingham with a poignant, rueful sadness, at last raises the temperature and brings this fascinating piece to a fervent, unSondheimian, happy ending.
Booking to 25 July. Information: 0870 890 1101.
Details are correct at the time of publication - please check with venue before booking.
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Audiences seem to be enjoying this revival much more than the critics and I strongly agree with the former. It's glorious. Trevor Nunn has bathed Sondheim's bittersweet musical comedy in exquisite lighting and white costumes giving the piece the aura of a Chekhovian sunset. Hannah Waddingham and Alexander Hanson are outstanding as the 'fools' that the brilliant Maureen Lipman scorns with hilarious and formidable retorts from her wheelchair. There is not one link in the cast. Jessie Buckley overcomes a difficult start to give a performance of fickle and fluttering youth. Plus, the score is one of the best ever written. Every Day A Little Death and the reprise of Send in the Clowns are especially moving. A Little Night Music is sheer perfection. I don't understand what the critics found lacking. Surely, they cannot have preferred the horrendous Saturday Night further up the road.
- Dj, London
I too beg to differ, on this occasion, with Nicholas de Jongh and at last night's West End Press night I felt that Trevor Nunn's take on "A Little Night Music" more than matched the famed Hal Prince 1975 original version. Nunn has drawn a true sense of midsummer magic, wit and melancholy from high-quality performances of three leads but the real strength in this production comes from the supporting cast who are faultless.
Not only is Hannah Waddingham's rendition of "Send in the Clowns, the musical's great thematic and emotional linchpin but still, for me, the highlight of the show, is Kelly Price's poignant and heartfelt reflection on fragmented, potentially terminal, relationships "Every day a little death"
If there was a chance that Broadway was beckoning for this production before its move from the Menier then by the week-end this deserves to be a full-on stampede.
- Trevor Chenery, Chalfont St Giles, Bucks, UK
I attended last night's performance, I haven't enjoyed myself at the theatre so much for a long time - and from someone who doesn't usually engage with musicals - it was hugely entertaining - congratulations to the cast on a job fantastically well done.
- Anon, London
I disagree! It's even better than at the Menier. The larger stage has opened it up in the same way as it did Sunday in the Park with George and during the Menier run it has clearly developed a confidence, warmth and balance between comedy and poignancy which now makes it definitive Sondheim. Wonderful!
- Gareth James, London UK
