2008 Chico State Spring Musical, Sondheim’s “A Little Night Music,” Staged in Harlen Adams Theatre in Early May

CSU, Chico’s School of the Arts will present its most lavish production of the year — the 2008 Spring Musical “A Little Night Music.”

“A Little Night Music,” an eight-time Tony Award-winning romantic story brimming with dark humor and waltz music by modern American musical theatre icon Stephen Sondheim, will be staged in Harlen Adams Theatre at 7:30 p.m. May 1-3 and May 8-10, and at 2 p.m. on May 4.

“A Little Night Music” will feature beautiful costumes and sets, a medium-sized orchestra conducted by Kyle Wiley Pickett, music dirctor of the North State Symphony, and some of CSU, Chico’s most talented musical theatre students, as well as well-known guest performers from the community.

“A Little Night Music” is the story of overlapping passionate love affairs buried beneath a twisted web of relationships. The musical takes place in Sweden in the early 1900s and focuses on the dysfunctional marriage of Frederick Egerman and his teenage wife Anne. Driven by sexual desire, Frederick begins flirting with Desiree Armfeldt, his mistress of 14 years earlier.
 
“It gets more complicated as Desiree invites Frederick and his family and her current lover and his wife for ‘A Weekend in the Country’ at her mother’s estate, where Desiree’s young daughter Fredericka lives,” said director Joel P. Rogers, Chair of the Department of Theatre.
 
“A Little Night Music” opened at Broadway’s Shubert Theatre in 1973 with 601 performances and continued its success in a London version. Eventually this fateful tale of love and lust, which was based off of a book by Hugh Wheeler, became an Ingmar Bergman film featuring Elizabeth Taylor.

The score contains Sondheim’s best-known song, “Send in the Clowns,” as well as “The Glamorous Life,” “You Must Meet My Wife,” “Every Day a Little Death,” “Liaisons,” “In Praise of Women,” “A Weekend in the Country,” and “The Miller’s Son.”
 
“A Little Night Music” won the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award and the Tony Award for Best Musical and Best Actress in a musical the year it premiered. Rogers anticipates that the play will do well in Chico because of the talented cast.
 
“We have the right students at the right time,” Rogers said. “This show is quite challenging and the Theatre Department is fortunate to produce it. Largely due to the vocal demands of the score, ‘A Little Night Music’ has never been produced in Chico.”
 
Audiences will appreciate that “A Little Night Music” is a “romantic and lush comedy” with “beautiful” and “challenging music,” said Rogers.
 
This style is very different from Sondheim’s other musicals, which include the thriller “Sweeney Todd” that recently became a box office hit, and Pulitzer Prize-winning “Sunday in the Park with George.”
 
“The entire score is written in 3⁄4 waltz time or some very close variations,” Rogers said. “Sondheim composed this musical early in his career and I think he was trying to challenge himself. Certainly, with waltz time, you end up with romantic melodies.”
 
The romantic score of “A Little Night Music,” enhances the impact of its love stories. Complicated rhythms and lyrics compliment the bizarre turns of affairs.
 
Frederick’s son Henrick, a seminary student, yearns for Frederick’s young wife Anne. The Count Carl Magnus’ wife desires Frederick. All of the lust emerges during a dinner party littered with awkward silences and solicitations between the characters and a subsequent game of Russian roulette.
 
“A Little Night Music” will be performed in Harlen Adams Theatre instead of Laxson Auditorium, where previous spring musicals have been staged. Because Harlen Adams Theatre is a smaller venue with a larger orchestra pit, audiences will be better able to experience the play’s witty drama and music.
 
The musical’s lush ambiance will be heightened by choreography created by graduating senior Jimmy Robertson, costume design by Department of Theatre faculty member Gail Holbrook, set design by Department of Theatre faculty member Dan Schindler, sound design by Department of Theatre faculty member Katie Whitlock, and lighting design by Steve Ellis, production coordinator for Chico Performances.

Holbrook said the costumes will help set the tone of the production as well as transport the audience to the early 1900s time period that the musical is set in. Costumes will be typical upper-class late-Victorian/Edwardian with a twist — the color scheme will be what one might imagine a winter sunset would look like in Sweden where “the nights go on forever,” she said.

The costumes for the women, as well as the men, will feature soft fabrics, lots of layering, and intricate embroidery.

“Joel and I were on the same page from the very start when it came to costumes,” she said. “We both felt it important that the costumes should complement the waltz-like music, the soft-lighting design, and the early 1900 Swedish/Scandinavian time period of the production.”

For the set design, Schindler and Rogers wanted to create a light and airy feeling.

“The entire world of the musical is framed in the garden and forest; this adds to the whimsical and flowing nature of the music,” said Schindler.

Because this musical takes place in Sweden at the turn of the century, Schindler decided to include Edwardian and Art Nouveau elements in the set design.

“The goal was to create a location that allows us to view multiple layers of action then flow between them, making the shifts as seamless as possible. This movement between characters and locations is also reflected in the music and the script.”

When coming up with an appropriate lighting design for “A Little Night Music,” Ellis kept in mind a key line from the musical — “The sun never sets and there is no where to hide.”

“This is the sentence that Joel and I used when discussing lighting for the show,” said Ellis. “There are many references to light and color within the text of the musical. I will be using these as guidelines in planning the lighting. I’ll also be working closely with the set and costume designers to make sure we have a unified concept.”

Ellis, on loan from Chico Performances, said he wanted to do the lighting design for the musical because he gets to revisit a show he worked on as lighting designer when he was an undergraduate.

“I am thrilled to be working with the department again on this wonderful\ musical,” he said.

The musical stars graduating senior Sara St. Pierre as Desiree Armfeldt; Carly Bracco from “The King and I” and “Bat Boy” as Anne Egerman; Teddy Spencer as Fredrik Egerman; Jon Kelly from “Urinetown” and “The King and I” as Henrik Egerman; Theresa Nicholas as Fredrika Armfeldt; graduating senior Sarah Cuc as Countess Charlotte Malcolm; and Christina Mattson as the Egerman’s maid Petra.
 
“A Little Night Music” will also feature guest artists Judy Clemens as Madame Armfeldt and Eric Seiler as Carl-Magnus Malcolm.
 
The Liebeslieder, a group of five singers that introduce important scenes, compliments the performance of the main actors These singers provide context for the musical and chide about their own foolish love affairs.
 
Members of the Liebeslieder include CSU, Chico student Paula Short as Mrs. Anderson; guest artist Rich Holst as Mr. Lindquist; guest artist Allison Rich as Mrs. Nordstrom; CSU, Chico graduate Sean Doughty as Mr. Erlanson; and CSU, Chico graduate Katie Brown as Mrs. Segstrom.
 
Throughout the varied cast “most of the characters fit into either the wealthy or the subordinates,” Rogers said. Although the class system is antiquated because the musical takes place at the turn of the last century, the lessons learned from the love affairs remain relevant.
 
“What audiences learn throughout the play is that no matter how much money and privilege you may have, romance and human connections aren’t easy,” Rogers said. “The real connections in the play are taking place, most often, between the folks that are, for lack of a better term, more simple, less pretentious, and more real.”

Rogers warns that at several instances during “A Little Night Music” these connections become a little risqué. However the play is suitable for teenagers and up.
 
“It’s probably not of much interest to younger kids, not because of the risqué qualities, but because it’s not a big flashy musical,” Rogers said. “’A Little Night Music’ is not about tap or glitzy costumes. It is much more of a romantic piece.”
 
Rogers senses the community will embrace “A Little Night Music” because of its down-to-earth qualities that are easy to identify with.
 
“‘A Little Night Music’ is one of my favorite scores and I am so excited about doing it. I had planned to do ‘Chicago,’ but the royalties were unavailable. The Theatre Department choose this show instead, and quite frankly, I am thrilled by the switch.”

Advance tickets, at $20 premium, $16 adults, $14 senior citizens, and $10 students/children, are available at the University Box Office, 898-6333. All seats are reserved. For disability-related accommodations, please call 898-4325. Add $2 for tickets purchased at the door.
 
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- Hillary Feeney