A Little Night Music  – Storyhouse Theatre, Chester

Daniel Flynn and Serena Evans in A Little Night Music at Storyhouse Theatre, Chester. Picture: Mark Carline

A Little Night Music continues in repertory at Storyhouse Theatre, Chester until 8 July 2018.

Star rating: five stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

Everything about Storyhouse’s production of A Little Night Music simply oozes style. Designer Jess Curtis tells us that she was inspired by, among other things, the work of Frank Lloyd Wright, and the lines and planes of her clean, sleek set certainly call his architecture to mind.

Musical director and arranger Alex Beetschen sits onstage, reassuringly at the keyboard of a highly-polished grand piano, surrounded by the other seven musicians in his skilful band. As they begin the opening tuning-up chords of the score, the members of the Quintet enter at various levels of the auditorium.

Through the overture and first-night waltz, they are joined by a number of dancers, and it’s clear that slick stage movement will become a major player in the feel of the show. Director Alex Clifton has worked with choreographer Yukiko Masui to give a smooth flow to the production, and scene changes take place with seemingly effortless ease.

Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler’s musical is steeped in wistful sadness, it is after all a story piled high with what-might-have-beens, but Clifton never allows it to wallow in its emotions. Even in numbers like ‘Every Day a Little Death’ and the showstopping ‘Send In the Clowns’ he keeps the bittersweet balance finely tuned.

There are several excellent individual performances. Daniel Flynn and Serena Evans spar beautifully as the former lovers Fredrik and Desiree, while Eleanor Sutton is disarmingly naive as the emotionally challenged Anne – a perfect foil for Richard Lounds’ wonderfully foppish and confused Henrik.

Both Mary Doherty as Countess Charlotte and Gay Soper as the wheelchair-bound Madame Armfeldt have commanding presence. However, the work is very much an ensemble piece, swirling round in the ever-decreasing circles of its continuous waltz. Like dancers at a ball, the characters slip in and out of each other’s lives with deftly handled wit, and the immorality that drives them is wonderfully wrought under Clifton’s pin-sharp direction.

The vocal agility of the cast is clearly apparent in their solo numbers, but it’s in the passages of complex counterpoint that the genius of the score is most vividly realised. ‘Now/Later/Soon’ and ‘You Must Meet My Wife’ show off the splendid timing in the performances, while ‘Weekend in the Country’ and ‘Last Waltz’ fill the stage with energy and movement to close their respective acts.

The quintet handle their almost ghostly presence well and really own the stage in the three night waltzes in Act II, and their placing at the close of the show, mirroring its opening, poetically highlights Sondheim’s almost tongue in cheek tying up of every loose end in the labyrinthine plot.

The gloss on this production is as high as the lacquer on the piano, and it opens Storyhouse’s new repertory season with enormous flair.

Nigel Smith