A LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC. Director: Fred Abrahamse. Musical Director: José Dias. Choreographer: Kirsten Isenberg. Cast: Samantha Peo, Aviva Pelham, Kate Normington, Brittany Smith, Jonathan Roxmouth and Marcel Meyer. At Theatre on the Bay.
BEVERLEY BROMMERT reviews
This Sondheim classic of the 1970s, a graceful hybrid of operetta and Feydeau-style farce, laced with acerbic epigrams worthy of Oscar Wilde, has what it takes to keep an audience complicit for nearly three hours. In short, a multifaceted gem of music and theatre alike.
Director Fred Abrahamse exploits this promising material to the maximum of its potential, aided by indefatigable accompaniment from José Dias at the keyboard, centre-stage, throughout.
Characters are approached with both empathetic tenderness and sharp-eyed lucidity, their frailties endearing rather than reprehensible. The common denominator uniting different generations is longing; longing for the right person with whom to find love, longing for the loss of youth and past opportunities, longing for fulfillment.
As for the staging, Abrahamse has worked his habitual magic with a petite space to accommodate a variety of settings, (bedrooms, a theatre, a garden), arenas of action both intimate and public, with meticulous attention to every detail. Credibility is promoted by Nicolaas de Jongh’s clever lighting.
Best of all are Meyer’s sumptuous costumes which, like the dark, ponderous furniture of the set, reflect upper middle class taste in pre-WW1 Sweden.
Transition from day to night
Abrahamse remarks that this work has the “twilight” quality of transition from day to night, a night which may bring some relief from emotional stress. The period (early 20th century) has the added poignancy of a world still innocent and prosperous before the nightmare of the Great War of 1914-1918.
However, there are smiles to leaven any dark forboding – Sondheim based this musical on Bergman’s Smiles of a Summer Night – and they reflect the progression from youth to age, like the colours of the female costumes (white to pink to red to purple, childhood to old age). The smiles are those of the young, the foolish, and the aged, inspired by knowledge of life and self, adding an element of philosophy to the rich content of the piece.
Casting is astute, with opera icon Aviva Pelham as the pivot around whom the characters gravitate on their emotional odyssey. As the feisty matriarch, Pelham excels, the mature beauty of her soprano apparent in song, the clarity of her diction in speech an example to other members of the cast who do not always do justice to Sondheim’s razor-sharp script.
All praise to the cast
That well-known aria Send in the Clowns is a predictable highlight, satisfying in every respect. Exquisitely modulated delivery from Samantha Peo as Desirée Armfeldt, her vivid dress a focal point in the penumbra of a bedroom, expresses all the humiliation of a frustrated lover with requisite poignancy.
Jonathan Roxmouth (Fredrik Egerman) deploys his considerable talent in both vocal and dramatic performance to add authenticity to each facet of a demanding persona: affectionate father, conflicted lover, and unhappy husband.
A bright new presence on the stage is young Mia-Cecilia Kriel, who impresses with a pleasing blend of freshness and poise in the role of Fredrika. Costumed in pristine white, she evokes a Henry James teenage heroine as she flits demurely from piano practice to her grandmother’s knee.
In the role of the cynical maid Petra, Brittany Smith injects an earthy note to counter the musical’s pervasive elegance, her operatically trained soprano rising effortlessly to the demands of her final solo as she resolves to marry the miller’s son.
Both Kate Normington (a delectable Countess Charlotte Malcolm) and Marcel Meyer, as her antipathetic spouse, bring conviction to their portrayals, while the callow young couple of Anne and Henrik Egerman (Liné Jordan and William Young) offer engaging naïvety in their quest for an elusive happiness.
Dancing, often incidental to a good musical, is used to create parentheses for the action as a metaphor for the plot: delicately choreographed by Kirsten Isenberg, three couples initiate the evening as they waltz exchanging partners, then provide a finale in settled, contented union before matriarch Armfeldt has the last word…
Well done to Cape Town Opera for staging this masterpiece with style.
What: A Little Night Music
Where and when: Theatre on the Bay until 12 July
Tickets: Webtickets
Photographs: Jeremeo Le Cordeur
WS
