I've been moving old post from an old blog that isn't used anymore over to this blog. (For those who need to know the Idiot is dead.) During the course of the moving the ones worth saving, I've also been reading the posts. I discuss my addiction to Sondheim's
Into The Woods in one of them.
Reading that got me thinking about my most recent musical addiction, Sondheim's (with a book by Hugh Wheeler)
A Little Night Music. (For a while it was
Avenue Q, but not anymore.) My biggest problem when trying to talk about most of these plays is that I haven't seen them performed. I've only listened to the soundtrack. There are very few soundtracks which print out the entire book of the play (
The Phantom of the Opera soundtrack spoiled me.), so I'm stuck just listening to the lyrics of the song and reading the few notes included to set the scene in which the song takes place.
That written, I'm gonna do my best to write about my new favorite musical.
A Little Night Music is based on an Ingmar Bergman movie (
Smiles of a Summer Night according to the
Wikipedia entry on the play.) and is about a bunch of rich Europeans trying not to be bored, for the most part.
There's Frederik and his new wife Anne, who's younger than Fredrick's son, who have yet to consummate their marriage, which is exquisitely laid out in the songs "Now" and "Soon" (which are grouped onto the same track with "Later" in between). Frederik wants to have sex. Anne doesn't, but she wants to keep the "good" life she has with him. The odd thing is when she finds out that Fredrick was visiting (and probably screwing) his old girlfriend, Desiree, she get's jealous, but she still doesn't sleep with him. While Frederik is visiting with Desiree, he sings of his wife and how wonderful she is, she even "gives [him] funny names-- / Like? / 'Old Dry-as-Dust.'"
There's Fredrick's grown son, Henrik, who's as sad as he can be because his father has married someone younger than he is and because he feel like he's foreshadowed by his father's accomplishment. In "Later," Henrik sings, as if he were someone else, "'Henrik? Who is Henrik? / Oh, the lawyer's son, the one who mumbles. / Short and boring, / Yes, he's hardly worth ignoring...'" Oh, he's also in love with his stepmother.
There's also Count Carl-Magnus Malcolm who is cheating on his wife, Charlotte, with Desiree. He finds Frederik with Desiree, who's an actress, in her dressing room when he comes for a "visit" and starts to worry about Desiree's fidelity toward him. He sings about how everyone should be honest and should have "fidelity like [his] to Desiree, / and Charlotte [his] devoted wife." He says the last part in a sort of aside, as if his wife's an after thought.
Charlotte and Anne are friends and talk about nearly everything. Charlotte knows her husband is cheating on her and laments it in the song "Everyday a Little Death."
The first act ends with Frederik and Anne being invited to Desiree's mother's, Madame Armfeldt, villa in the country. Anne doesn't want to go, but Charlotte insists she should go to show how much more beautiful she is than Desiree, and Charlotte figures it's a way to get her husband to herself for a weekend. When the Count learns of the weekend, he insists that he and his wife go because his wife "hasn't been getting out nearly enough." Charlotte's not happy.
The second act has some wonderful songs and some wonderful ideas, but I don't have time to discuss them right now. There are also more wonderful songs in the first act, but since I haven't seen the play, I'm not quite sure how they fit into the play overall. It's almost time for me to be away from work, and I've decided that's more important than finishing this.
I doubt I ever will.
I hope that one day, soon, I'll actually be able to see this play being performed. Until then, I'll be singing along with the soundtrack.