The Houston production of Stephen Sondheim's "A Little Night Music" that
opened tonight presents a curious equation:  its parts, fabulous that they
are, exceed their sum.

With an unsurpassable dream cast; a searching, intelligent direction; and
a visually stunning production, something is still missing.  It's difficult
to say what it is:  perhaps the "coherence" the work's heroine is seeking,
maybe just the intimacy and completeness that reaches the heart better at
a small-scale, "humble" community-theater presentation.

Ah, but those parts!  I am on my way back for Saturday's second
performance.  It's a great adventure...  even just getting to the splendid,
slightly phantasmagorical Wortham Center, and the new "multimedia modular
stage" of the excellent, comfortable, appealing Brown Theater.

If you don't mind the 90 percent humidity and stay above the airconditioned
downtown tunnel system, you will be walking on Smith Street, pass Jones
Plaza (Slick Willie's Pool Hall on the left, the great Alley Theater,
announcements of Houston Symphony and Houston Livestock Show activities
on the same marquee on the right), and there you are.

David Glockley's brave and imaginative Houston Grand Opera -- originator
of some of the best new American works, inventor of joint productions on
an international scale -- pulled out all the stops for this one.

This music/operetta/show has been done by opera companies before (well
at the New York City Opera, badly at the operetta summit of Theater an
der Wien.  It has also been done with the direct participation of Sondheim,
who actually spent some time here last week.  (But, contrary to previous
reports he did NOT add new music.  But, there are some aspects of this
production -- running through Feb.  14 -- that are unique, unprecedented.

The first is a cast assembled by Glockley with imagination and a
major financial commitment.  It is a powerful mix of opera greats and
up-and-coming young singers, including Frederica von Stade (Desiree), Sheri
Greenawald (Charlotte), Nanne Puritz (Anne), Evelyn Lear (Madame Armfeldt),
Thomas Allen (Fredrik), John McVeigh (Henrik), Frank Hernandez
(Carl-Magnus)...  and many more.

It's simply thrilling just to see and hear von Stade, possibly the
greatest lyrical mezzo of our time; Allen, who recently celebrated 25 years
of leading baritone roles at Covent Garden; to see Lear once again on the
stage (or just sit near her husband, the great Wagnerian, Thomas Stewart).
Yes, it's opera groupie time...  and that may not bode well for what is
essentially a musical, a modern operetta written in old-fashioned
three-quarter time.

But not to worry:  the usual problem (singers who act in opera houses
vs. actors who sing on Broadway) doesn't apply here.  As director Michael
Leeds has said of his cast, with genuine admiration, "these are ACTING
singers!" And how.  Von Stade, Greenawald, Allen and Lear were all
perfectly wonderful.  (And for Lear, at 73 -- she mentions the age freely
and proudly -- it's also closing a cycle that began many years ago when
Sondheim wrote "Green Finch" for her Bernstein- Sondheim album, long out
of print, before it became a vital part of "Sweeney Todd.")

Musically, of course, they were all fabulous.  Von Stade's "Send in the
Clowns" was inimitably simple and graceful.  Lear's "Liaisons" had power.
Allen's voice gently carried through the big hall far better than all the
amplified dialogue (with body mikes yet!  ugh).  Cleverly, music director
Grant Gershon rearranged the music so that von Stade and Allen took over
parts of the Liebeslieder Singers' "chorus," getting more to do than the
work originally assigned them.

Leeds brought out an aspect of the work no one else has thought of before,
although it seems obvious once you see it.  With all its multitude of
references (Soon/Later/ Now/Remember?/Every Day a Little Death, etc.), "A
Little Night Music" is about TIME, its impact on love (and the effect of
love on time, to a lesser degree).

So Leeds' "LNM" begins with a clock over proscenium, Frederika (Megan
Kane) winding up a clock on stage, the Liebeslieder Singers appearing
as the mechanical figures from a clock tower.  Perhaps taking a leaf
from Sondheim's "Follies," Leeds also introduced a "Young Desiree" and
a "Young Fredrik" to fill in the rather sketchy references to their
earlier encounter and romance.  The roles are DANCED (by Martha Butler
and Mark Arvin) and they are integrated into the work seamlessly.

The Houston "LNM" is also one of the most enchanting physical productions
in any opera house or Broadway theater.  Although apparently handicapped
at first by placing the orchestra upstage, and using a very simple set of
curved stairs and small platforms, the visual aspects of the show come
together in a triumphant combination of Kenneth Foy's projected images, Ann
Hould-Ward's hand-painted costumes (similar to her "Beauty and the Beast"
work, but even better), and Ken Billington's lighting (his recent "Chicago"
was his 70th Broadway production).  Foy's projections are a heartfelt
tribute to the French Impressionists, incongruously but effectively
supporting the show's "Viennese feeling."

The one obvious problem (perhaps on opening night only, although it looks
deliberate and possibly not subject to correction) was the painstaking and
painful tempo -- as if the singers and the conductor were in a contest to
see who can go slower.  Gershon won:  after all, he is in charge -- or
perhaps not.  It is not possible to "pull a show together" if the musical
direction sounds comatose.  The first act ran an hour and 40 minutes.  The
entire work came in at a Wagnerian rate of three hours, exclusive of
intermission.

Janos Gereben/SF
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