Interview: Alison Ewing of A LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC at 42nd Street Moon Is Thrilled to Be Back Onstage in a Sondheim Classic

San Francisco's 42nd Street Moon has chosen a perfect musical for its return to live performance with the Stephen Sondheim classic A Little Night Music. Featuring a wryly humorous book by Hugh Wheeler, the 1973 Tony Award-Winner for Best Musical tells a rueful and randy tale of mismatched lovers, led by the itinerant touring actress Desiree Armfeldt and her erstwhile romantic partner, Fredrik, who has rather inconveniently just married a young virgin. The glorious score, comprised almost entirely of waltzes, culminates in Sondheim's best-known song, "Send in the Clowns." A Little Night Music will perform at the Gateway Theatre in downtown San Francisco November 4 - 21, 2021. For additional info, visit 42ndstmoon.org/a-little-night-music.

Alison Ewing leads the cast as Desiree, a role famously created by the incandescent Glynis Johns on Broadway and interpreted somewhat less successfully by Elizabeth Taylor in the 1977 film. Ewing is a familiar presence for Bay Area musical theater lovers, but she may be equally well-known to audiences in, say, Cincinnati or Las Vegas, due to the many national tours she's done in shows such as Mamma Mia!, Cabaret and Anastasia. I caught up with Ewing last week from her home in Pinole while she was between rehearsals. The Iowa native was inherently upbeat, down-to-earth and clearly thrilled to be getting back onstage. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

Will this be your first time back performing in front of a live audience since COVID?

Yes. I have done a lot of Zoom things, but as far as live performing, this is the first. It feels both fantastic and scary, you know?

How has it been for you rehearsing while navigating the COVID safety protocols?

Each week we have to take COVID tests to make sure we're all safe. I think the biggest challenge we've had is rehearsing in masks. There's a lot of people in the company who I've never met or worked with before, and I don't even really know what they look like fully. [laughs] My leading man, Martin Bell, he and I have this long, gorgeous scene together and we worked on the scene for a few hours, and then went outside to take our break, and when you're outside of course and standing a little further distanced, you can take your mask off. And I said, "Omigosh! I've been working with you for days now and I don't even know what you look like yet!"

How familiar were you with the A Little Night Music before you were cast in it?

I wasn't very familiar with it. I had of course known songs like [sings] "A Weekend in the Country" and "Hi Ho, the Glamorous Life!" but I don't think it's one of Sondheim's more "popular" shows the way Into the Woods would be. The first thing I did was watch that Ingmar Bergman movie it was based on [Smiles of a Summer Night], and it was so wonderful. I'd thought, "Unh, this looks like an old, boring black and white movie." But no - it was fantastic! And our script follows that movie quite closely.

And then I just started listening to all the different people who have done my role, like Judi Dench, Bernadette Peters, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Glynis Johns. Seeing the different touches they put on the role is really helping me develop my own personal [take on the] character.

I think Desiree can be a tricky role to pull off because it wasn't written for a singer or dancer or comedian, so you can't rely on those usual musical theater stocks in trade to win the audience over, right?

Yes. I think there's a subtlety in her. She has to be a leading lady, but also have a super-subtle, dry comedy about her, without being unlikable. It's a tricky little line that I'm trying to work on right now.

And of course, Desiree gets to sing "Send in the Clowns," which is only the most famous song Sondheim ever wrote, so -

I know! No pressure, huh?

Exactly! So how do you get the billion other existing renditions of that song out of your head and manage to make it your own?

I just decided to think of my own story and completely go with that, just sing the way I sing, from my heart. You know, that's all I can do. Just try to make it a deep, acting piece from my own personal experiences that make me relate to Desiree in that moment.

What do you think Desiree's going through in that moment?

In her head, she's going through how much of life is bad timing. How you look back on your life and see where you've been and the choices you've made that perhaps you thought were right, but now that you're a little more experienced you can see how everything you worked for isn't what you genuinely had wanted. And by the time you know you want that, perhaps the timing is not right and it's too late. There are so many things in life that carry regrets, and I think she's just reminiscing on that.

One of your signature roles is Tanya in Mamma Mia!, which you did on Broadway and on tour.

Yes, I did two years in the national tour, about six months in the Las Vegas production at the Tropicana, and then almost a year on Broadway, closing the whole 10-year Broadway run. So, yeah, I've done it a lot. Thousands of times!

I think she's the most fun of the three female leads in that show. Is playing her as much fun as it seems to the audience?

Yes! It's actually more fun. First of all, her costumes, her nails, her spray tan, her bling, her lip gloss, the vain person that she is, is really fun to play. When I auditioned, I was also auditioning for the role of Donna, and when they called to tell me I got Tanya, I said, "Omigod, I'm so glad!" I mean, Donna is an amazing role, but she really has to carry the show, and Tanya has her own journey. And I'm always partial to the comic people, so I was really happy when I got that phone call.

You've done several national tours, correct?

Yeah, I've done six national tours.

I've always wondered what touring life is actually like. Did you enjoy it?

Yes! I'm always kind of anxious to get back to another show on the road. I actually think I love touring most of all, because you're constantly flying or busing to a new city. You start to play the same theaters over and over again, and get to know the local dressers at the theater and look forward to "Oh, yeah, in Cincinnati I have Pam, and she's so cool." Or you start to know the local haunts, like "Oh, there's a speakeasy in Schenectady that's fantastic." Things like that. And it's really exciting to do the same show in a different city each week and see how the audience response differs. Some things really land, some things don't, depending on if we're in Florida or if we're in West Virginia.

In real life, do you think you're more of a Tanya or a Desiree?

I guess I would say Desiree. First of all, she starts the show touring, and I relate a lot to that. And she also has somebody she's in love with, and that dichotomy of "I want my career, but I also want this home life with a man and a child." Unlike Tanya, who had three husbands and was all botoxed up and had plastic surgery and was a cool woman having a fling with a younger person. It's fun to play, but that's actually, truly not what I'm like.

I just have to ask about the video of the Family Ties TV theme song "Without Us" that you did with your husband Keith Pinto for 42nd Street Moon. It's one of the funniest things I've seen all year.

[laughs] Well, thank you!

I just found it so slyly demented.

It was definitely something we weren't sure how to tackle. They just kind of said, "Shoot different scene-lets around your own home," which for a stage actor to suddenly have to be shooting different angles, with different lighting, that was challenging for us. We didn't have somebody shooting for us, so we were setting up the camera, pushing "play" and then running in front of it. But the end result was really the genius of DC [Scarpelli], who put the whole thing together. He is so good at editing! The thing where we did a still photo of ourselves and then made it that black and white sketch, and then did like sepia within it - that was all him.

We really tried to look at the actual video with Michael J. Fox and recreate all of the vignettes that they do for the Family Ties TV show - with just the two of us and our dog. [laughs] But then there was so much more to the song, because for the actual TV show it just had one verse, but they wanted us to do the whole song, so we were like "What if we dress up and just kind of like sing to each other, and then DC can do what he wants with that?" So it ended up being kind of a silly thing that turned out great. But I think you also sort of have to have watched that show growing up to really see the funny moments in it.

Well, I thought it was hysterical and I'd never really watched Family Ties. And to be honest, I was a little leery up front knowing that you and Keith are married, because I sometimes feel that when actual couples work together it can fall a little flat or come across as too cute, you know?

Right. I would say Keith and my biggest issue when we work together is that we both have large ideas, so sometimes we argue a bit while we're working. But then once we get the final product it's like "Okay, I see what you wanted here. That really did work. You're a genius." [laughs] I think because we're married, it's easy for us to sort of talk over each other sometimes, but in the end, we do work well together. We just have to know who is guiding in the moment and who's not, and how to be collaborative together.

Yeah, and that's probably the key to any good relationship, even if you're not both actors.

Exactly!