Summer smiles upon us in Evanston: ‘A Little Night Music’ at Theo

Colette Todd and Patrick Byrnes. Photo by Elizabeth Stenholt Photography.

When Stephen Sondheim sat down to talk with Jonathan Tunick about orchestrating A Little Night Music, he said he wanted his score to sound like the air was scented with perfume. To this, Tunick said “Ah, strings.”

Thank the midsummer gods for Raquel Navarro and Rachel Schuldt, violinist and cellist playing so well in Theo’s chamber showing. Strings are something rare at this level and so for a show described by its original director Hal Prince as “whipped cream with knives”, their sound is the dollop on top of an all-around sharp production.

Concerning a chain of love triangles in fin-de-siècle Sweden during the longest days of the year—when, in the Arctic Circle, the sun never quite sets—A Little Night Music is a musical cast in the glow of maybe-but-alas. If only I hadn’t just married who I’ve married (Patrick Byrnes as middle-aged Fredrik Egerman and Chamaya Moody as his much younger new bride Anne). If only we had married then (Byrnes and Colette Todd in the plum role of actress Desirée Armfeldt). If only I wasn’t so dammed up inside (J Alan as Fredrik’s repressed seminary-attending son Henrik, who pines for Anne). If only I wasn’t saddled with a buffoon, rugged and swoon-worthy though he may be (Kevin Webb as the buffoon Count Carl-Magnus; Maya Rowe as his saddled wife Charlotte, burning and dying inside). If only I could see why everyone around me is all in a dither about this love business (a particularly tart Honey West as the monied ex-courtesan Madame Armfeldt.)

Visiting from Mercury Theater, L. Walter Stearns certainly brings the light-comedy whipped cream (and Brenda Didier keeps everyone swirling in waltz time), but he also ensures that those knives poke as sharply as they have to. If interpreted less wryly and more earnestly than one might expect a Stephen Sondheim adaptation of an Ingmar Bergman art movie to play, it does get some of the period-piece starch out of the collar. (If not the period-piece disappearing-reappearing pseudo-British accents.)

I will admit, though, that at first I thought his handling of Madison Kauffman’s bawdy maidservant Petra was keyed for some far less genteel sex comedy. In a musical where everyone dances around the point, she’s direct, an exclamation point in a world of ellipses. But, through verve and sparkle, she not only turns the solo “The Miller’s Son” into a highlight, but also The Point of The Show. True, the preceding song, “Send In the Clowns” usually gets all the attention—and Todd’s rendition earns top marks, no question, torn out of her with no hope of a “maybe” to ease her pain—but “The Miller’s Son” reminds us that “maybe but alas” is not the means with which the romantic fools she serves should live life. One can always look back and forward and at what’s directly in front.

This ensemble is—what?—ten feet in front of you, singing impeccably. Celebrate that before it passes by.

A Little Night Music runs through Jul. 14 at 721 Howard St., Evanston. For tickets or more information, please call (773)939-4101 or visit theo-u.com.

For more reviews on this or other shows, please visit theatreinchicago.com.