Sondheim's A Little Night Music Gets a Queer Twist
A Little Night Music, is getting a new production in Los Angeles, with a queer twist.The tale of love, lust, and jealousy, set in 1901 Sweden, revolves around actress Desirée Armfeldt and her lovers, past and present: lawyer Fredrik Egerman and Count Carl-Magnus Malcolm, respectively.
Both Egerman and the count are married, and they, their wives, and assorted others agree to spend a weekend at Desirée’s mother’s estate.
As one might expect, complications ensue.With music and lyrics by Sondheim, book by Hugh Wheeler (inspired by the Ingmar Bergman film Smiles of a Summer Night), and direction by frequent Sondheim collaborator Harold Prince, the show was a huge success of Broadway in 1973-1974, running for 601 performances and winning six Tony Awards, including Best Musical, Best Book of a Musical, and Best Original Score — a score that features one of Sondheim’s best-known songs, “Send in the Clowns.” It has since been staged all over the world, and it was revived on Broadway in 2009.
But the L.A. production, opening Friday at Greenway Court Theatre, adds some new flavor to this delectable, bittersweet confection.“A Little Night Music is considered one of Stephen Sondheim's biggest triumphs and, like the majority of Sondheim's material, was written with little to no queer representation despite [his] being one of the most prolific queer artists the world has ever known,” says Ryan O’Connor, the Los Angeles stage veteran who is directing the production.
