Each night smiles three times, the aged and jaded Madame Armfelt (Maggie Mark) tells her young granddaughter Fredrika (Hannah Forsley): first for the young, who know nothing; second for the fools, who know too little; and finally for the old, who know too much. Sometimes these night smiles seem to be grins, other times grimaces, and often just smirks, in Stephen Sondheim’s sumptuously wise comedy, A Little Night Music. This classic, given a very satisfying production by David Kaye for the Seacoast Repertory Theatre, is a human comedy in the truest sense: with a humor that at once relieves and underscores the serious matters that underlie it, this musical explores the common and hopelessly interrelated problems of lust, love, and our messy, mortal manner of aging.Life gets exhilarating but complicated for Fredrik, a recently remarried middle-aged lawyer (Steven Dascoulias) when he reencounters his old flame, the aging stage actress Desiree (Maryann Zschau). This is bad news for both Fredrik’s 18-year-old virgin bride Ann (Megan Quinn) and Desiree’s current diversion, the married and bone-headedly virile Count Carl-Magnus (Joe Cooper). Rounding out the farce are Fredrik’s grown son Henrik (Dan Beaulieu), an awkward seminarian desperately in love with Ann; Petra (Laurie Ewer), the sensuous maid with eyes (and arms, mouth, etc.) for Henrik; and the manically passive-aggressive Countess Charlotte (Grace Sumner) who’s had it with her husband’s open philandering. Everybody’s desires, obligations, schemes, and delusions weave an entertaining comic web, but through its core fibers runs the tragedy that we are all, every day, getting old.
Originally suggested by the 1956 Ingmar Bergman film Smiles from a Summer Night, Sondheim’s musical certainly recalls the Swedish master’s vision of humanity — at once rich, stark, and in the hands of powerful archetypal forces. All of the play’s action is enabled by five singers in white, a sort of very knowing and suave Greek chorus (Jamie Ceparo, Ashley St. Martin, Cary Davis, Jon Roth, and Jennifer Senecal). They reveal characters from beneath white shrouds, set their scenes, proffer them cognac, roses, and nooses, and sing with cavalier omniscience about their doings and desires. They shift wicker chairs and satin divans over Michael Minahan’s surreally blanched stage, where bone-colored trees come and go over a floor whorled with white as if some strong tide had only recently waned.
Despite a few opening-weekend tonal jitters, Seacoast Rep’s cast gives some gorgeous, beautifully-cast, and thrillingly sung performances. As Ann, Quinn gives witty and sensitive depth to a young and unversed girl, and Sumner’s Charlotte is a devastating riot, taut and volatile. Her eyes and face work overtime as Charlotte’s quick mind processes and passes judgment on everything around her. And as Petra, the long-bodied and expressive Ewer is breathtaking. Her every stride and measured servant’s glance register both desire and powerful self-awareness, and her performance of the haunting “Miller’s Son” chills both the heart and the loins.
As the mature lovers Fredrik and Desiree, Dascoulias and Zschau wallow luxuriously in the revisionism of middle age. Although Desiree shares a distracting bad wig condition with her mother, she has a fine voice and a wry candor, well-matched to Dascoulias’s thoughtful Fredrik. Henrik is another scene-stealer in Beaulieu’s hands, blinking, sulking, and clutching at his sleeves as he yearns for Ann and despises all the frivolity and generally untidy desires of everyone around him.
