I haven't heard anything about other casting possibilities for London.
Yes, Ian McKellen was announced to play Fredrik in the NT production, and my memory is that the announcement that Guittard would be playing Fredrik came rather late.
Phillips was not in the Chichester production or in the London transfer of the production. It was Dorothy Tutin. It gets confusing because there was the TER/JAY recording that is sometimes said to be a recording with the cast of that production, but it's mostly not the cast of that production. Just Susan Hampshire, Eric Flynn but in a different role (Fredrik on the recording, Carl-Magnus in the production), and the quintet. And the recording uses the reduced orchestration used in the Chichester production or something very close to it.
I think one of Ethan Mordden's oddest opinions is that the TER/JAY recording is the best Night Music recording. I think it's perfectly respectable (well, mostly), but I'd rank it below the OBCR (one of the greatest of all cast recordings for me), the OLCR, the National (even though I have some big reservations about it), and perhaps even the Barcelona recording in Catalan. Some of it is because I don't know why anyone would rather listen to that orchestration, basically a reduction of Tunick, than the full Tunick orchestrations, and at least the fuller versions (if not as full as on the OBCR and the OLCR, with the former having additional strings) on the National and Barcelona recordings. And the performances are a mixed bag. It has its points but the best? To me that's a very strange opinion. |
