Director's Notes

A Little Night Music opened on Broadway in 1973. Based on a 1955 Ingmar Bergman film entitled Smiles of a Summer Night, the show was nominated for 11 Tony Awards, winning 6, including Best Musical. It was the third collaboration between composer Stephen Sondheim and director Hal Prince after Company in 1970 and Follies in 1971.

Set in Sweden at the turn of the 20th century, the show follows couples searching for love and happiness in a more rigid, conservative society. The world in which this tapestry unfurls is heightened through classically influenced musical composition, high-status characters, and formal waltzes. Like an Oscar Wilde comedy of manners, much of this show’s humor is based on the anachronistic relationship between the base, humanist desires these characters are entertaining against a backdrop of polite society and social mores far beyond what seems reasonable in any era.

This is a deceptive comedy. A period piece relying on clever language, turns of phrase, and farce, A Little Night Music continues to entertain audiences year after year, with the most recent Broadway revival in 2009 garnering 4 more Tony nominations with a win for Catherine Zeta Jones as Best Leading Actress in a Musical.

The appeal of a period piece is that the audience is given the required aesthetic distance to really analyze the characters’ true feelings and intentions, without the weight of shared societal contrivances. By divesting ourselves of the “rules of the world” (as many of them are outdated and no longer applicable in 2024), we can see what these characters cannot: happiness is out there for the taking, they just have to go get it. There is nothing in their way except their own perceived limitations about the rules of their world and the judgement of society. Should they find a way to be true to themselves, they will be far happier than they are when the show starts.

The contemporaneousness of this show’s lessons and themes still hold water today, fifty-one years after the show’s initial premiere on Broadway. The pursuit of happiness is a driving force of the human experience. A classic conundrum in the contemporary world is how to find that happiness when it seems to run against the “expectations” of what others believe you should want. Even today, we find ourselves struggling against self-imposed obstacles that are often constructed from our own perceptions and beliefs about the way others will think about our choices. If this show teaches us anything, it’s that happiness is in our own hands, we just have to go out and take it. Sondheim hoped this story would illustrate that concept. And like all the greats, the legacy of his work endures, not only because of his great music, but because of the show’s evergreen thematic poignancy.

As always, any large musical such as this is a mammoth undertaking far beyond the work of the human beings you see performing on stage. I am so thankful to the crew, designers, musicians, and countless others who worked hard to produce this show. The stage management team who was with us every day, our incredible music director and choreographer, but especially these performers, who put in substantial hours to learn this music, these dances and to become these characters, many of whom are quite far afield from our students both in age and life experience. I am so proud of their work, thankful I got to spend so much time with them and honored that I get to share in this creative endeavor with everyone who was involved. I hope you enjoy the show.

--Tom Alsip