A Little Night Music: in words, on video, and currently on Broadway

If I didn’t live a million miles away from New York and/or had a gratuitous amount of spending money on-hand, I would go see the current revival of A Little Night Music. Star-studded Sondheim alumni cast (first Angela Lansbury, now Bernadette Peters and Elaine Stritch) aside — though that would be a major selling point on its own, and by all accounts they’re pretty amazing in the roles — it’s one of the only Sondheim shows I don’t have a clear sense of in its whole, since I’ve never seen a production or read a full script of it. It’s also one of the Sondheim shows I came to latest, just because it didn’t have the big loud emotions that drew my high school self to shows like Sweeney Todd or Assassins or even Follies. Which is to say, there is neither murder nor overt emotional collapse in ALNM. Covert collapse, maybe; but my seventeen-year-old self didn’t pick up on that.

ALNM deals mostly in quiet emotions: embarrassment, wry regret, dry humor, bewilderment, unexpected joy. The characters keep their cool most of the time, which is part of their problem, and half the reason for the comedy that blossoms between them in the second half (repressed people alone on a country retreat together = hilarity!). In its humor and melancholy and romantic mix-and-match, it’s the show that most reminds me of a Shakespearean comedy. Which is probably the most pretentious way possible to sell the merits of a show (actually, that’s not true: I could have said it’s Beckettian. Which it is not.).

Send in the mediashare.

News that is relevant to me

I have to say I’m pretty excited about this news. I like William Finn, I like James Lapine, and I like Little Miss Sunshine a lot — plus Finn as a composer is creative and weird in a way that seems like it will suit the offbeat tone of the movie. It seems like a score I would remember if I heard it.

On the topic of William Finn, who is one of those composers theater critics love to love, I will say the one thing I have a hard time figuring out about him in general is his lyrics, just because they are often very . . . contrived? for lack of a better word. I don’t mean in the sense of “rhymes ‘degree’ with ‘vertigris,'” I mean “why did you decide to use the phrase ‘his shaking will not pass?'” It’s very deliberately crafted in a way that people don’t actually speak, and I can only assume Finn does it for a reason but I don’t know what that reason is.

This actually worked pretty well (in my opinion) in his show The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee (wiki), just because when you’re writing about socially awkward district spelling bee contestants you can imagine them using words like “animosity,” “exuberance” and “fecund” as Finn does. On the other hand, it throws me out of the moment to be listening to Falsettoland (wiki) and hear the characters sing “We’re watching Jewish boys who cannot play baseball play baseball.”

But bottom line it doesn’t distract too much from my enjoyment of his musicals, and I am looking forward to seeing what he will do with Little Miss Sunshine.