Is anyone having a better season—nay, a better two weeks—than Jonathan Tunick? First there was the dreamy Encores! production of Titanic—the true stars of which were Maury Yeston’s sweeping score and Tunick’s Tony-winning orchestrations (expanded for the Encores! 30-piece orchestra); then he won a Tony for his work on the hit Merrily We Roll Along revival; next the Transport Group produced a one-night-only star-studded Follies concert at Carnegie Hall featuring, of course, Tunick’s original orchestrations; and now, a weekend-long A Little Night Music in concert at Lincoln Center’s David Geffen Hall with the—wait for it—53-piece Orchestra of St. Luke’s. (For those keeping track, that’s nearly double the number of players Tunick had for the original 1973 Broadway production.) One more thing: All four Night Music performances will be conducted by Tunick himself.
Any musical theater fan will tell you that size matters … when it comes to orchestras. As much as we love a pared-down John Doyle actors-playing-instruments production, there’s simply nothing like a stage full of strings, especially in a show packed with waltzes. (Speaking of Doyle, he’s credited with the concert adaptation of Hugh Wheeler’s book, and it is, predictably, pared-down.) So it’s no surprise that this Night Music sounds beautiful, especially in the bigger, bolder moments. “Now,” “Later,” and “Soon”—sung, respectively, by a sexually frustrated Fredrik (Ron Raines), his intellectually frustrated son, Henrik (Jason Gotay, shout-singing), and Fredrik’s emotionally frustrated wife Anne (a lovely Kerstin Anderson)—are each nice on their own; but when they’re layered atop one another, they produce a massive swell of sound and surge of emotion. And the Act 1 ender, the operatic “A Weekend in the Country”—which incorporates every character, including the five-person Greek chorus—is gorgeous in every way.
The pace, however, seems to drag. Were the tempi always this slow? No one knows Sondheim’s music better than Tunick, but a couple songs move at an extremely leisurely pace—notably, the back-to-back “Liaisons,” a remember-the-old-days number sung by the wheelchair-bound but still glamorous former courtesan Madame Armfeldt (Marsha Mason), and “In Praise of Women,” from the blowhard Count Carl-Magnus (Oklahoma! Tony winner Shuler Hensley), who can’t stand the thought of his mistress, Desiree Armfeldt (Susan Graham), cheating on him.
“Liaisons” could have benefited from a few cuts; Mason tries her best in the number, but she’s much more at ease in the book scenes, dispensing advice to granddaughter Fredrika (Addie Harrington) like “Don’t squeeze your bosoms against the chair, dear. It’ll stunt their growth.” Also: “Never marry, or even dally with, a Scandinavian.” She’s also wonderfully vicious to her daughter, Desiree: “I do not object to the immorality of your life—merely its sloppiness.”
Though he’s a few decades older than Len Cariou was when he originated Fredrik, Raines is charming, and has a genuine connection with Graham—an opera star who’ll likely be a draw to Lincoln Center ticket buyers but a performer who, like so many opera singers before her, would clearly rather be singing. And she has only one solo, “Send in the Clowns.”
But Cynthia Erivo (a Tony winner for The Color Purple), as the playful servant Petra, has only one solo, “The Miller’s Son,” Sondheim’s tongue-twisting salute to the pleasures of the flesh, but it’s word-perfect. And if only Tony winner Ruthie Ann Miles (The King and I) had more to do! She’s an absolute gas as Countess Charlotte, Carl-Magnus’ put-upon wife, and her “Every Day a Little Death” duet with Anderson is a heartbreaker.
For Sondheim completists: If you’ve been wanting to hear “Silly People”—a song for Madame Armfeldt’s servant, Frid, that was cut in Boston prior to Broadway—now’s your chance. You didn’t think Jin Ha (Here We Are) was going to just push around a wheelchair all night, did you? If you listen closely, the lyrics echo the movie on which Night Music is based, Ingmar Bergman’s 1955 Smiles of a Summer Night: “When now it smiles/ It smiles for lovers/ When next it smiles/ It smiles for fools.”
A Little Night Music opened June 27, 2024, at David Geffen Hall and runs through June 29. Tickets and information: lincolncenter.org
