A Little Night Music by Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler.

Opera Australia’s forays into Broadway and operetta dovetail neatly into a single production with Stephen Sondheim’s A Little Night Music.

While it’s a 1970s Broadway musical, there’s so much about the setting, style and music of this adaptation of Ingmar Bergman's Smiles of a Summer Night that is redolent of operetta.

Stuart Maunder has given the musical a stylish, fluid, elegantly costumed production, set against the effectively draped gauzes of Roger Kirk’s design. It's apparent simplicity, is, truly, a virtue. A stage revolve is used to great effect, creating a smooth, almost cinematic flow between scenes, simply suggested by furnishings, mostly drawn from the opera company’s ample store of period props and furnishings. My only criticism in the props department would be the pedal powered cars, which caused quite a titter to ripple through the audience.

It is a production, I am informed, which sits far more comfortably on the relatively intimate Opera Theatre, than the larger Arts Centre stage where it premiered in Melbourne last year.

There’s genuine star-power in A Little Night Music, with Sigrid Thornton and Anthony Warlow as the middle-aged central figures. She is an actress of waning fame, he a successful lawyer; former lovers, they weave a path toward each other, complicated by a jealous lover and a young virgin wife. They are the ‘clowns’ of Sondheim’s most famous song, Send in the Clowns, which shakes off the clichés and regains its dramatic meaning engagingly in context, more acted than sung by Thornton. Nancye Hayes adds further lustre to the star-power as crusty matriarch Madame Armfeldt.

These stars never disappoint.

Sigrid Thornton acts and sing / speaks the music which falls to Désirée Armfeldt deliciously, in a performance which is delightfully nuanced throughout. After a string of comic opera roles, Anthony Warlow’s Fredrik Egerman reminds us what a wonderful dramatic musical theatre performer he is. Nancye Hayes, certainly a grand dame of Australian musical theatre, presides impressively as aging courtesan Madame Armfeldt.

It is, however, a company with other delights.

Lucy Maunder effervesces as the flirtatious, yet sexually reluctant young wife Anne. As Fredrik’s sexually repressed, yet never-the-less frisky seminarian son Henrik, Matthew Robinson captures the gloomy intensity of the role with somber wit and ease.

Ben Lewis is full of military starch and arrogance as the vain, none-too-bright but dashing lover Count Carl-Magnus Malcolm, while Katrina Retallick, is biting yet engaging as his neglected wife Charlotte.

As the earthy maid Petra, Kate Maree Hoolihan, captures the role’s vibrant, open sexuality joyously and exuberantly, bringing the house down with a barnstorming rendition of showstopper, The Miller’s Wife.

The whole is framed knowingly by a ‘Greek’ chorus of five operatic singers who provide knowing commentary on the action; impeccably elegant in evening wear, they combine impressively vocally, and charm with wicked innuendo.

I've now seen seven professional productions of A Little Night Music, here and abroad. This one ranks among my favourites.

One of Sondheim’s most accessible musicals is well served in this simple, charming production.

Neil Litchfield

Image: Sigrid Thornton (Désirée Armfeldt) & Anthony Warlow (Fredrik Egerman) in Opera Australia's A Little Night Music. Photographer: Branco Gaica.