"A Little Night Music' revived in New York

An elegantly spare set, muted lighting, a curved wall of glass doors. One door opens halfway. We see a shaft of light, then a chair, then a cellist. A vocalized overture: la la la. People waltz in the half-light.

We have entered one of Stephen Sondheim's enchanting musical treatises on love lost and found. This splendid revival of A Little Night Music is directed by Trevor Nunn who directed the London production last year.

As in the works on which it's based— Bergman's Smiles of a Summer Night, with echoes of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream— the subject is folly: human, ridiculous, sexual, sophisticated, aching foolishness. The ancient courtesan, Madame Armfeldt (the still-astonishing, still-beautiful, still-commanding Angela Lansbury) reminds us that the night has three smiles: the first "at the young, who know nothing," the second "at the fools who know too little," and the third, "at the old who know too much."

Middle-aged fools

Madame Armfeldt's daughter, an actress of legendary fame and high divadom, is Desiree (the gorgeous, mischievous Catherine Zeta-Jones), whose long-ago lover, Frederik (Alexander Hanson—just handsome enough, just distinguished enough, just self-amused enough) reappears in her life. These are the middle-aged fools, the clowns of the show's most famous song, "Send in the Clowns," which is, to reassure you fans, wonderfully, intimately, wryly sung:

Desiree: Was that a farce?
Fredrik: My fault, I fear.
Desiree: Me as a merry-go-round.
Fredrik: Me as King Lear.

This is Sondheim's signature: the self-aware, the ironical, the endearing. In other words, us.

The young who know nothing are Frederik's teenage wife (Ramona Mallory), still a virgin after 11 months of marriage, and his nephew, Henrik (Hunter Ryan Herdlicka). She is exceedingly silly and shrill; he is exceedingly serious and pious. A perfect "“and perfectly annoying— couple.

Various fools commit various follies along the way: One of Desiree's lovers, the fabulously pompous Count Carl-Magnus (big-voiced Aaron Lazar), who is defined by the wicked lyric as "an endless erection/That falls on its knees/When it sees its reflection," and his wife, the masochistic Countess Charlotte (Erin Davie whose rendition of "Every Day a Little Death" is beautifully, coolly despairing), and the lascivious, carpe-diem servant, Petra (Leigh Ann Larkin).

Timing is everything

The score is filled with counterpoint and complex harmonies, and every voice is fully up to it, just as every face seems fully able to convey the subtle reactions and emotions that chase each other across the moments. The waltz is the architecture of the show, allowing for pairings and re-pairings within the choreographed sexuality of a ballroom dance. Timing— crucial to everything in life, but especially to dancing— is central to Sondheim's vision, and even the song titles tell us much: "Now," "Later," "Soon," "Remember."

Lansbury sits in Madame Armfeldt's wheelchair, a wig of white curls piled high, wearing a wasp-waist dress glittering with jet, and sings the delicious song, "Liaisons," lamenting the loss of "style" and "skill" in modern affairs, remembering, in a perfectly controlled quaver, the days when, "At the palace of the Duke of Ferrara/I acquired some position/Plus a tiny Titian…."

With a Sondheim musical, it's always a balancing act between the big commercial demands of the Broadway stage and the intimate, understated demands of the author's subtlety. This production, with its creamy costumes and airy set, seems to find the angle of repose, giving us the pleasures of both.