Academy Award-winner Catherine Zeta-Jones, five-time Tony Award®-winner Angela Lansbury and Olivier Award-nominee Alexander Hanson star in the first Broadway revival of Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler's Tony Award-winning A LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC, directed by Tony Award®- winner Trevor Nunn.

A LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC - featuring a score by Stephen Sondheim and a book by Hugh Wheeler - originally opened in 1973 at Broadway's Shubert Theatre and ran for 601 performances. Produced and directed by Harold Prince, the production garnered six Tony Awards® including Best Musical and Best Original Score. The Sondheim score features one of the composer's best-known songs, "Send in the Clowns," as well as "Every Day a Little Death," "The Miller's Son" and "A Weekend in the Country."

Trevor Nunn's production of A LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC debuted to critical acclaim at London's Menier Chocolate Factory in November 2008 and subsequently transferred to the West End where it played a successful limited engagement through July 25, 2009 at the Garrick Theatre.

David Rooney, Variety: "The most atypical of Ingmar Bergman's celebrated films, "Smiles of a Summer Night" brought ripe carnality and a delicious sense of irony to its fin-de-siecle gathering of romantically muddled Swedes. Those same intoxicating elements were translated to "A Little Night Music," Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler's exquisite waltz-musical inspired by the film. Reviving the 1973 show, director Trevor Nunn brings a blunt, heavy hand where a glissando touch is required, but the wit and sophistication of the material are sufficient to withstand even this phlegmatic staging. A handful of magnetic leads provides further insurance against the uneven production."

Thom Geier, Entertainment Weekly: "Still, this is an enviable dilemma for most musical revivals: too much star wattage. As the song goes: Isn't it rich, indeed. Grade: B+"

John Simon, Bloomberg.com: "Two stars appear in Trevor Nunn's revival of Stephen Sondheim's "A Little Night Music": Angela Lansbury and, in her Broadway debut, Catherine Zeta-Jones. Only Lansbury can be said to triumph."

Elysa Gardner, USA Today: "Lansbury created roles in two Sondheim shows, the short-lived cult classic Anyone Can Whistle (undone by a messy libretto) and the enduring masterpiece Sweeney Todd. Now, at 84, she is gloriously reviving the part of Madame Armfeldt in director Trevor Nunn's new production of A Little Night Music (*** out of four), which opened Sunday at the Walter Kerr Theatre."

Erik Haagensen, Backstage.com: "I have always felt that director Trevor Nunn approaches musicals and plays with different palettes: broad and bold for the former, detailed and nuanced for the latter. In this chamber version of "A Little Night Music," however, he seems to have applied his play palette to a musical. While it's hard not to miss the romantic sweep and orchestral lushness of Harold Prince's glorious original production, which I saw on national tour multiple times, what Nunn delivers is a persuasive and entertaining account of a great American musical."

Michael Kuchwara, Associated Press: "The first Broadway revival of "A Little Night Music," the enchanting, moonstruck musical based on the Ingmar Bergman film "Smiles of a Summer Night," is a curious affair. There are some lovely moments, most of them supplied by Angela Lansbury, but too much of this adult, sophisticated show, which opened Sunday at the Walter Kerr Theatre, seems forced, boisterous and a little crude."

Joe Dziemianowicz, NY Daily News: Catherine Zeta-Jones' name over the title and on the marquee at the Walter Kerr Theatre helps goose ticket sales for "A Little Night Music." But her glamorous presence can't cover the shortfalls in Trevor Nunn's dim and downsized production from London's Menier Chocolate Factory. It doesn't do justice to Stephen Sondheim's most elegant musical."

Elisabeth Vincentelli, NY Post: "As Madame Armfeldt (Desirée's mother), Lansbury's even better -- if a tad too broadly comic -- than in "Blithe Spirit," and it's a treat to hear her sing on Broadway for the first time since a short-lived "Mame" in 1983. Her "Liaisons" is a marvel of resourceful, inventive interpretation, lyric manglings be damned. But Madame Armfeldt is merely a supporting character. The star here is Zeta-Jones. She's radiant, yet doesn't shed much light on Desirée."

Frank Scheck, Hollywood Reporter: "Bottom Line: This uneven but welcome revival of Sondheim's classicmusical features a triumphant Broadway debut by Catherine Zeta-Jones."

Ben Brantley, The New York Times: "Nunn's "Little Night Music," the first full Broadway revival of the show, may well be a hit too, though not because of any artistic finesse. It has what is a producer's favorite form of insurance these days: stars known to the public from movies, television and tabloids, of whom people can later say things like "She's even more beautiful in person" (as they surely will of the lustrous Zeta-Jones) or "She's amazing for her age" (in reference to the 84-year-old Lansbury)."

Michael Sommers, NewJerseyNewsroom.com: Looking as elegant as the musical she graces, Catherine Zeta-Jones makes a smashing Broadway debut in a wistful revival of "A Little Night Music." Co-starred with the redoubtable Angela Lansbury as her imperious old mama in a romantic comedy set in early 1900s Sweden, Zeta-Jones portrays Desiree, a middle-aged actress who gets a second chance at true love with a former flame."

Scott Brown, New York Magazine: "ALNM is among Sondheim's near-perfect creations, but it's not without its challenges, over and above the complexity of the music: Maunder overmuch and the show's a drag; shine up the comedy and it risks coming off as a yuppie you-can-have-it-all manifesto. Maintaining that balance is the job of Desiree and Frederik, and Zeta-Jones-a tremendous presence here, in great voice-mates up with Hanson perfectly: They play Desiree and Frederik as extremely magnetic, fabulously charming, utterly empty people. I say this admiringly: Yes, they have feelings, deep and complex; yes, despite their many sins, they deserve love as much as anyone. But neither Zeta-Jones-whose "Send in the Clowns" is a shattering cry from the void-nor Hanson nor Nunn makes any excuses for the pair's intrinsic emotional vacuity or their confessed inability to transcend themselves in any sort of human union. They're cool, at best, to their children, genially indifferent to their peers, and they see, in one another, smoked-mirror reflections of themselves. They cancel each other-and, in the half-light, that's good enough."

Peter Marks, The Washington Post: "Still, you have to award Zeta-Jones showing-up points. She gives off so many effortless sparks -- those T-Mobile commercials making sport of her in-person allure turn out not to be exaggerations -- that you wonder if she should be credited as part of the lighting design. And anyway, when all is said and done, she is revealed as one of the less ill-suited elements of the production, which opened Sunday night on Broadway at the Walter Kerr Theatre. The very best working part is five-time Tony winner Angela Lansbury, who as aged, imperious Madame Armfeldt, erstwhile consort to kings and dukes, offers a marvelous, blunt-force comic performance, redolent of professional polish and a keen understanding of how to entertain."

Claire Prentice, UK Telegraph: "The Sondheim score features some of the composer's best-known songs, including Send in the Clowns, which Zeta Jones delivers with a quiet, reflective poignancy.
Far from another star vehicle, this thoroughly British affair is good, old-fashioned entertainment at its sparkling best."

Emma Brockes, UK Guardian: "Stephen Sondheim's A Little Night Music, directed by Trevor Nunn and the biggest opening in New York this season, is a tough gig for a Broadway debut, even for a movie star who won an Oscar for Chicago. With its complex score and no conventional showstoppers, it requires the skills of a seasoned stage actor. And while Catherine Zeta-Jones can act and sing, she can't do both at once in this production - at least not in one take."

Michael Braken, Metro.US: "Making her Broadway debut (but with experience in her career in London's West End), Zeta-Jones is a natural onstage: casual and comfortable while exuding understated flair. Angela Lansbury, as her mother, is superb as always."

Posted on: Sunday, December 13, 2009 @ 07:15 PM Posted by: Robert Diamond