A splendid cast, innovative direction, the most gorgeous costumes in town, and Stephen Sondheim at his most sublime are just several of the reasons to celebrate Knot Free Productions’ intimate staging of the rarely revived A Little Night Music at Greenway Court Theatre.

Adapted from Ingmar Bergman’s Smiles of a Summer Night, composer-lyricist Sondheim and book writer Hugh Wheeler’s 1973 Broadway gem features a cast of romantically mismatched characters who unite for a life-changing “Weekend In The Country.”

Chief among them are glamorous stage star Desiree Armfeldt (Catherine Wadkins), her former lover Fredrik (Peyton Crim), Fredrik’s “child bride” Anne (Ty Deran), his sexually frustrated son Henrik (Amanda Kruger), Desiree’s latest lover Carl-Magnus (Christopher Robert Smith), and Carl-Magnus’s disillusioned wife Charlotte (Sarah Wolter).

Also along for the romantically bumpy ride are Desiree’s wheelchair-bound mother Madame Armfeldt (Zoe Bright), the actress’s young daughter Fredrika (Emma Rose), and servants Petra (Alexa Rosengaus) and Frid (Roni Paige), the latter of whom may be more than just coworkers in the Armfeldt home.

In the first of his inspired directorial touches, Ryan O’Connor stages his Little Night Music as a memory musical told through the eyes of a now grown-up Fredrika (Tal Fox), who doubles as a member of O’Connor’s all-female Quintet (Fox as Nordstrom, Andrea Lara as Anderssen, Paige as Segstrom, Meredith Pyle as Lindquist, and Dekontee Tucrkile as Erlanson), singing and dancing and commenting wryly on what fools these particular mortals be.

Act One sets the scene for the country weekend soon to come with some of master songwriter Sondheim’s most memorable gems, virtually all of them in three-quarter time.

Sung consecutively and then in counterpoint, “Now, “Later,” and “Soon” reveal Fredrik’s frustration with his virginal wife, Anne’s fear of sexual intimacy, and Henrik’s overactive teenage hormones.

Fredrik expresses his desire for his former lover to get to know his ever blushing bride in “You Must Meet My Wife,” something Desiree seems less than eager to do; “Liaisons” has the elderly Madame Armfeldt schooling her granddaughter in the gentility of her generation’s romantic entanglements; and Carl Magnus does his best to convince himself that the discovery of a half-dressed Desiree and Fredrik together in her boudoir was entirely innocent in “In Praise Of Women.”

Most powerful of all, “Every Day A Little Death” gives us a deeply unhappy Charlotte laying bare the devastation of her marriage to a cheating louse.

And then comes the aforementioned full-cast “A Weekend In The Country,” an invitation to return post-intermission to find all of the above characters united for a life-changing fin de semaine.

The luminous Adkins brings out both the wry humor and the poignancy of the musical’s signature “Send In The Clown,” a terrific Crim gives Fredrik requisite masculine verve and some particularly resonant baritone pipes, Bright’s Madame Armfeldt sings “Liaisons” with an effective mix of nostalgia and wit, and Rose plays Fredrika with young teen sweetness.

Still it’s the supporting cast who make for the evening’s biggest scene stealers: Smith’s deliciously full of himself Carl-Magnus; an absolutely stunning Wolter, whose ache-and-anger-filled “Every Day A Little Death” proves the evening’s biggest and most justified applause-getter, and Rosengaus’s saucy, seductive Petra, who makes “The Miller’s Son” every bit the 11:00 showstopper it’s meant to be, not to mention the new meaning it attains after a same-sex romp in the hay with a gender-flipped Frid, another noteworthy O’Connor touch.

The director’s re-conceiving of Fredrik’s wife and son as gender-non-conforming and entrusting them to a pair of nonbinary performers adds hitherto unexplored dimensions to Anne’s virginity and Henrik’s sexual frustration, and both Deran and Kruger act and sing the living daylights out of their roles.

As for the production’s ubiquitous Quintet, having only female voices perform musical numbers traditionally sung by a gender-mixed fivesome gives their harmonies a beauty unique to O’Connor’s vision, and Fox, Paige, Pyle, Lara, and Tucrkile are all five gifted vocalists.

Not only is this A Little Night Music exquisitely sung by those characters for whom exquisite voices are a must, musical director Anthony Zediker and his five-member strings-and-piano orchestra* provide pitch-perfect instrumental backup throughout, and choreographer Deran integrates numerous graceful moves along the way.

Scenic designer EK Dagenfield backs his multi-purpose thrust-stage set with birch-tree-evoking cylindrical panels that effectively complement Act Two’s country weekend, and Donny Jackson lights each scene to Scandinavian midnight sun perfection.

Mia Glenn-Schuster’s sound design mostly ensures that we hear Sondheim’s lyrics, though not quite as often as I’d wish. Jenine MacDonald’s properties and Chadd McMillan’s wigs fit this period piece to a T.

Best of all are Michael Mullen’s spectacular array of early 20th Century costumes, each more stunningly gorgeous than the next.

Fox is casting director. Lux Amaya is Fredrika alternate and Nick Bruno, Fox, Ariel Murillo, Nicolette (Nico) Norgaard, Paige, Caroline Pugliese, and Pyle are covers.

Elana Luo is assistant director. Matthew Tong is assistant musical director. Dylan Jackson is stage manager and Caliope Weisman is assistant director. Ken Werther is publicist.

Stephen Sondheim aficionados craving something other than yet another Into The Woods, Sweeney Todd, or A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum will find particular joy in welcoming A Little Night Music to Greenway Court Theatre, but just about any musical theater lover is likely to stand up and cheer this most welcome of revivals.

*Xenia Deviatkina-Loh, Matthew Tong, Alice Townsend, Zediker, and Angie Zheng

Greenway Court Theatre, 544 N. Fairfax Blvd., Los Angeles.
bit.ly/NightMusic2022

–Steven Stanley
February 26, 2022
Photos: Bryan Carpender

Tags: Greenway Court Theatre, Hugh Wheeler, Los Angeles Theater Review, Stephen Sondheim