The revival of Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler's A Little Night Music opened last night at the Walter Kerr Theatre, starring Catherine Zeta-Jones and Angela Lansbury; Nonesuch Records / PS Classics will record the cast album in January. New York calls the revival a "stunning, twilit, devastatingly good new production ... beautiful." Sondheim and Lansbury talk to the magazine about this and their previous work together. NPR's Weekend Edition looks at a different sort of relationship with ties to the play. USA Today praises both Lansbury and Sondheim's score for their "blend of wit and poignancy."
Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler's A Little Night Music opened last night at the Walter Kerr Theatre. The production, starring Catherine Zeta-Jones, Angela Lansbury, and Alexander Hanson, and directed by Trevor Nunn, is the musical's first revival since its 1973 debut. As reported late last week in the Nonesuch Journal, Nonesuch Records and PS Classics will record the cast album on January 4, with a release date to be announced.
New York magazine's Scott Brown places A Little Night Music "among Sondheim’s near-perfect creations" and calls the Nunn-directed revival a "stunning, twilit, devastatingly good new production ... beautiful." Read the review at nymag.com.
Brown's colleague at New York magazine Jesse Green spoke with Sondheim and Lansbury about their latest professional undertaking together, as well as some very memorable past projects, including their first time working together, on 1964's short-lived Anyone Can Whistle; the 1970s revival of Gypsy; and the original production of Sweeney Todd in 1979, in which Lansbury originated the role of the nefarious Mrs. Lovett. You can read the interview, "Stephen Sondheim and Angela Lansbury on a lifetime in theater," at nymag.com.
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NPR's Jeff Lunden examined, in a piece for Weekend Edition Sunday, a different sort of long-standing relationship with ties to A Little Night Music. Lunden, who describes the work as "an elegant, sophisticated musical," looks at one character in particular, that of Anne, played in the new production by Ramona Mallory. Though this performance marks Ramona's Broadway debut, the young actress was hardly unfamiliar with the role: her parents had fallen in love on the set of the original production in 1973; her mother, Victoria Mallory, originated the part of Anne in the 1973 production, and her father, Mark Lambert, played Henrik, Anne's love interest. You can hear all three discuss this serendipitous occasion in the piece at npr.org.
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USA Today's Elysa Gardner gives the new production three out of four stars, praising Lansbury and Sondheim's score for their "blend of wit and poignancy." Gardner calls Lansbury's return to the Broadway stage of late as a gift. "But it's particular cause for celebration," the reviewer writes, "that she is appearing, for the first time in more than 25 years, in a musical. And not just any musical—a work by Stephen Sondheim, with whom she has already made magic more than once." Read the review at usatoday.com.
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