| re: Finally Watched SMILES OF A SUMMER NIGHT | |
| Posted by: AlanScott 11:58 pm EDT 06/16/20 | |
| In reply to: re: Finally Watched SMILES OF A SUMMER NIGHT - BigM 09:35 pm EDT 06/16/20 | |
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| Night Music is a show about which I've long had very mixed feelings. Mostly positive, but it's my least favorite of the Sondheim-Prince shows of 1970-1981. I do love parts of it, but not other parts. Smiles of a Summer Night seems to me a great work of art in a way that Night Music is not for me, although a case can certainly be made that making Desiree's child a 13-year-old girl rather than a three-year-old boy leads to something a bit richer, and that there are gains (as well as perhaps some losses) in the drastically different Madame Armfeldt. And there is greatness in Every Day a Little Death, Send in the Clowns and The Miller's Son that helps lift Night Music. Still, Night Music seems to me a very mixed bag, with often problematic writing in the book and even in some of the lyrics, which I find overly arch at times, despite the dazzlingly brilliant craft on display. I find some of the writing in the book downright cringeworthy. My feelings are, a bit surprisingly, not that different from the feelings of some of the critics who reviewed the original production. There is a myth that Night Music got better reviews than either Company or Follies, but if you read the reviews, that's not true. It's true in the Times but overall it's not. And this is reflected in the fact that both Company and Follies won the New York Drama Critics Circle award for best musical on the first ballot, each of them getting a majority. Company won in a near landslide. Follies won a bit less strongly, against not especially strong competition, but it won a majority on the first ballot (and with room to spare). Night Music did not win a majority on the first ballot, and they had to proceed to a weighted ballot. Perhaps surprisingly, Seesaw came in second on the weighted ballot, slightly ahead of Pippin. I should add that in those days Best Plays, after its thorough listing of the Circle voting, would include the choices of critics not in the Circle, and among those critics, Night Music was the unanimous choice. And Hobe Morrison of Variety missed that year's Circle voting, and his choice was Night Music, although his review had been less than a rave. But even if Morrison had been at the voting session, Night Music still would have fallen short of a majority on the first ballot. It would have fallen short by one vote rather than two but it would have fallen short. |
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