REVIEW: Cygnet kicks off new era confidently with well-staged 'Music'

By ANNE MARIE WELSH - For the North County Times | Wednesday, March 26, 2008 9:55 AM PDT ∞

A larger second home filled to capacity; a popular and sophisticated Stephen Sondheim musical; a dozen of the city's best musical theater voices ---- no wonder a celebratory air hovered over Cygnet Theatre's beautifully sung opening of "A Little Night Music."

Artistic director Sean Murray directed this sweeping staging of Sondheim's bittersweet operetta, sending his large, gorgeously costumed cast (including himself as the aging barrister Fredrik) all over an extended Old Town Theatre stage. With that confident fluency, Murray seemed to be announcing that this was a new era ---- new for the centrally located, tourist-accessible theater, and also for Murray's steadily growing company.

The one thing this impressive production lacked, however, was what such lyric theater needs most ---- live music. When Murray and company used synthesized orchestral sound for their recent, otherwise entertaining "My Fair Lady," the stated reason was that there was not enough room for players and musical instruments in Cygnet's Rolando space (near San Diego State University).

There's no lack of space in Old Town, and where there's a musical will, there's a way ---- as Lamb's Players Theatre has consistently shown with instrumental ensembles even in its shallow resident space in Coronado. Finding a way will be Murray's next challenge as Cygnet seeks the same across-the-board artistic excellence in musical theater that it has already achieved in so many of his drama and comedy productions.

The karaoke accompaniment aside, Cygnet's "A Little Night Music" offers vocal and visual pleasures all evening. Based on one of Ingmar Bergman's few film comedies, "Smiles of a Summer Night," the musical theater piece trades on the sophisticated and urbane wit of Sondheim's lyrics and the rhythms of his plaintive waltzes about love lost and time passing.

The three interlocking love triangles in Hugh Wheeler's script ---- Fredrik loves his virgin-wife Anne, who loves his son Henrik, for instance ---- resolve themselves happily during a smiling country night in turn-of-the-century Sweden. Also on hand for the romantic convolutions are the actress Desiree Armfeldt's dying mother (Sandra Ellis-Troy) and her young daughter (Nicki Elledge). Their ends-of-life wisdom is amplified by a quintet of singers serving as a kind of Greek chorus.

Directorially, Murray turns up the comedy at Cygnet, including his own eye-rolling self-mockery as Fredrik: He's married a giddy 18-year-old (sweetly attractive Courtney Evans) who could be his daughter, then wonders why she's still a virgin 11 months after the wedding. He begins to come to his senses when he reunites with his former lover, Desiree (Marci Anne Wuebben).

Similarly, Wuebben's approach to this once-flamboyant, now "maturing" woman tends toward the bluntly comic rather than the subtly nostalgic and self-critical. That changes when she delivers her carefully cadenced "Send in the Clowns," Sondheim's one hit ballad. When this midlife couple suggest a rueful tone and their shared awareness of their mortality, they deepen their characters and tap the well of real feeling in the 1973 piece.

For alongside the urbane, world-weary wit of the onetime courtesan, Madame Armfeldt ("I acquired some position ---- plus a tiny Titian"), there's complex emotion and even wisdom in "A Little Night Music." When Desiree offers to renew their affair permanently, for instance, Fredrik at first resists, knowing "I shouldn't flirt with rescue when I have no intention of being saved."

With music direction by Don LeMaster, the various duets, trios and ensemble pieces, many with plangent harmonies and intricate counterpoints, are truly impressive, cresting beyond the deadening accompaniment in such moments as the Act 1 closer "A Weekend in the Country."

Vocally, the cast goes from strength to strength. Sandy Campbell gets the secondary but wonderfully arch role of Countess Charlotte, married to the narcissistic military lout, Count Carl-Magnus. He idealizes his mistress Desiree and treats his unhappy wife like dirt.

With her crystalline soprano, meticulous diction, and dry comic timing, Campbell proves brilliant ---- in the mournful comedy of "Every Day a Little Death," during her vengeful dinner scene, and in those painfully sincere moments when she reveals her real torment to Fredrik.

To her sorrow, she actually loves Carl-Magnus, here played by Randall Dodge with instinctive ease and assurance. A beloved veteran of braggart soldier roles at Moonlight Stage in Vista, he's been typecast here as the foolish stuffed shirt; but Dodge (and his strong baritone) know the difference between Disney musical comedy and this far more refined piece.

Sandra Ellis-Troy talk-sang her tunes convincingly as Madame Armfeldt, and Sean Cox made a delightfully doleful Henrik, Fredrik's self-mortifying son. In the chorus, yet another baritone, this one with powerful bass resonances, truly soared: Welcome to San Diego theater, Michael Dooling.

Elegant design support also came from Jeanne Reith (costumes), Sean Fanning (set), Matthew Novotny (lighting), and George Ye (sound). Now if only one of Cygnet's generous "artist sponsors" would sponsor the instrumentalists whose playing could give Cygnet at Old Town the vibrancy and spontaneity of live music.

"A Little Night Music"

When: 8 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays; 2 and 7 p.m. Sundays; through May 11

Where: Old Town Theatre, 4040 Twiggs St., Old Town San Diego

Tickets: $23-$37

Info: (619) 337-1525

Web: www.cygnettheatre.com

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