A Little Night Music

After the pain of the remainder of the Castullucci trilogy yesterday, I was feeling desperately in need of some uplift and the utterly enchanting "A Little Night Music" was exactly what the doctor ordered. Trevor Nunn's elegant production is a beautiful creation and the cast a fine bunch. That's before we reach Stephen Sondheim's terrific score.

Apart from "Send in the Clowns" I didn't recognise a single song, yet this is a show packed with hummable tunes. The lyrics are delightfully witty, the patter type songs in particular are indebted to the words as much as the music (all provided my Sondheim). The opening passage is a stunning bit of staging to a magical bit of music. The various characters emerge from the misty lighting, dancing the waltzes that dominate the score, it all seems so perfect yet as the piece progresses the fractured relationships slowly unravel. If the production has a flaw it's that the comedy is often overplayed to the expense of the double-edged humour. We can laugh at Maureen Lipman's hysterical Madame Armfeldt but the sense of loss that she spent her youth sleeping around for material wealth rather than finding love is lost.

Hannah Waddingham might be a decade too young, her looks don't exactly fit with the aging beauty, but she's a lovely singer, her rendition of "Send in the Clowns" was hugely effecting. Quietly reserved and not a little mournful yet ultimately rather sexy. Alexander Hanson isn't helped by a less than ravishing beard and the top of his range was less robust than I've heard from him before (an off night perhaps) but he remains a clever actor and is ideally suited to the piece. Pity Jessie Buckley (one of the TV Nancys for anyone keeping score) who was brilliantly naive but made to sing with an accent that rendered her voice pinched and shrill. Kelly Price is a marvellous performer, her "Every Day a Little Death" was desperately moving despite the excessive comedy of the scene that led up to it.

This is a lovely, clean production of a gorgeous musical. This production plays to humour at the expense of pathos but it still (just about) finds a winning balance by the conclusion. It's a warm, sentimental but sophisticated work that begs to be seen. Slickly designed and superbly performed this makes for a very pleasant evening at the theatre.