Stephen Sondheim’s wry and beautiful comedy of love and regret, A Little Night Music, comes to Holland Park for a single al fresco concert performance in the year of his 90th birthday.
Presented by Quick Fantastic and Janie Dee in association with Opera Holland Park
Inspired by Ingmar Bergman’s film, Smiles of a Summer Night, and named after Mozart’s serenade, Eine kleine Nachtmusik, Sondheim’s musical weaves a tapestry of songs and waltzes as new romances begin, ex-lovers reunite, and secret passions are revealed. The night smiles three times: first on the young, second on fools, third on the old. Last seen together in the National Theatre’s celebrated production of Follies, Janie Dee and Joanna Riding lead a cast of Olivier Award-winning performers (Sharif Afifi, Hiba Elchikhe, Danielle Fiamanya, Fra Fee, Hilary Harwood, Emma Kingston, Emma Harrold, Nadim Naaman, Laura Pitt-Pulford, Ella Tronson and Kayi Ushe), directed by Alastair Knights. Alex Parker conducts an eight piece ensemble of instrumentalists in Jason Carr’s critically acclaimed orchestration of Sondheim’s score.
And as is surely appropriate in Dominic Cooke’s production, ghosts of the past interplay with what we’re seeing from top to bottom. It was great to see Dame Felicity Lott as Heidi, a different but no less affecting proposition than Dame Josephine Barstow (there truly ain’t nothing like a…). And the young talents of Gemma Sutton, Ian McIntosh, Harry Hepple and Christine Tucker are eloquently elegant as the younger incarnations of the central quartet.