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In Stephen Sondheim’s “A Little Night Music” everyone wants the wrong person until a midsummer weekend forces them to confront desire, regret and the possibility of choosing happiness. Marblehead Little Theatre’s production, produced by Lisa Fama and Andrew Barnett, captures the show’s sophisticated wit and emotional depth with a clarity that makes its reputation for difficulty seem baffling.
The story follows lawyer Fredrik Egerman (Matthew Ford) whose 11-month marriage to young Anne (Abby Mae Rogers) remains unconsummated. When he reconnects with former lover Desiree Armfeldt (Ursina Amsler), an actress, romantic complications spill into a country weekend at Desiree’s mother’s estate. Fredrik’s son Henrik (Cole Dolan Hastings) harbors dangerous feelings for his stepmother.
Director Alexandra Dietrich returns to the 1973 musical two decades after performing in it. In a preview interview she explained she had waited to direct it. “I was afraid that I was not yet ready to let it breathe like that,” she said. “I hadn’t lived enough life to return to it.” That lived experience shows in staging that trusts the material completely.
Heather Phillips delivers the production’s standout performance as Countess Charlotte Malcolm. Her comic timing is impeccable and she brings natural authenticity to every line. Phillips makes Charlotte’s sharpness a survival skill rather than a punch line, never softening the character’s intelligence to make her likable. The result is a woman whose clarity cuts because it is earned.
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Rogers plays Anne’s girlishness as a choice the character keeps making because it offers leverage in a world that expects her to be simple. When she delivers the line “I married you because I felt sorry for you” the cruelty shocks precisely because it comes from someone we have underestimated. Rogers shows us a young woman who wields her youth as a weapon, controlling her middle-aged husband through strategic retreat and childish demands.
Hastings faces perhaps the production’s most difficult assignment as Henrik, Fredrik’s seminary student son consumed by unrequited longing for his stepmother. The role demands making tortured sincerity compelling rather than melodramatic. Henrik must seem genuinely at risk — suicidal ideation runs through the character — while remaining sympathetic despite inappropriate desire. Hastings finds the intellectual dimension of Henrik’s suffering, playing him as a young man whose theological training gives him vocabulary to analyze his own misery but no tools to escape it.
If there is a unifying force beyond Sondheim’s perpetual waltz time it is jealousy. Nearly every relationship runs on it. Anne is jealous of Desiree’s hold on Fredrik. Charlotte is jealous of her husband’s mistress. Carl-Magnus is jealous of any man who looks at either woman. Even Henrik is jealous of his father’s access to Anne. Dietrich foregrounds this theme, showing how jealousy drives characters to manipulation, cruelty and increasingly desperate attempts at control. These elegant people in their beautiful clothes are engaged in savage competition for love, attention and power.
The show’s most cynical moment arrives with “Every Day a Little Death” when Charlotte and Anne discover their shared understanding that relationships involve constant small surrenders. The two women occupy opposite sides of different triangles — both wives watching their husbands drawn to the same woman — yet find themselves in the same emotional territory, diminished by men who do not fully see them. Phillips and Rogers find the bitter humor in this recognition without playing for pity. The minor-key waltz gives their duet a funeral march quality, beautiful and devastating in equal measure.
Amsler’s Desiree anchors the production with quiet strength, avoiding glamour or self-pity. Her Desiree is practical, self-aware, worn down by years of compromise. The chemistry between Amsler and Ford builds gradually. When they reunite in her dressing room after 14 years apart the scene plays the awkwardness, the testing, the tentative rediscovery of whether old feelings still exist. They earn the connection by playing uncertainty before recognition.
When Amsler delivers “Send in the Clowns” she sings it almost like talking to herself, testing whether humor might make humiliation easier to bear. Sondheim wrote the song for actress Glynis Johns, who had limited vocal range, so the melody barely moves. Amsler strips away theatrical technique to find something closer to speech.
Ford sings with restraint throughout, warm and controlled with diction so easy every word registers. The voice is easy on the ears, never pushing for effect. When he opens up in “In Praise of Women” the release carries power because we have heard him holding back.
Music director Thomas Smoker leads the cast through Sondheim’s waltz-based structure where nearly everything unfolds in three-quarter time. The precision required to make this sound effortless cannot be overstated. They achieve it, supported by a small pit including harpist Matt Putnam, bassist Olivia Chavez, clarinetist Jenny Connors, violinists Rosie Samter and Isabelle Lewinstein and cellist Marshunda Smith.
Dietrich staged much of the show before cast members learned the music, having them speak Sondheim’s lyrics as dialogue first. The cast honors that approach with performances that feel like discovery rather than recitation.
With translucent lace panels, cascading green vines and open sightlines, Dietrich and Barnett (who share set design credit) transform MLT’s intimate stage into multiple locations without elaborate scenery. The stage never seals itself into discrete spaces. Emotional states bleed into one another and moments that appear private are shadowed by awareness of others nearby. Time feels continuous, creating the sense that everything happens within the same long summer evening. Nature is omnipresent but controlled, cultivated rather than wild — a garden maintained by rules, like the society the characters inhabit.
Bryan Lussier’s lighting design creates distinct locations and Laura Dillon’s costumes establish period and character economically. The supporting company includes Andrew Hankinson as Count Carl-Magnus Malcolm, Ariel Sargent as Petra, Kyle Doherty as Frid, Alexander Shilo as Bertrand and Sue Brother as Madame Armfeldt.
Dietrich’s casting emphasizes authenticity over theatrical convention, spanning ages from 12-year-old Ida Pelikhov as young Fredrika Armfeldt to Brother as Madame Armfeldt. No one wears age makeup or pretends to be something they are not.
Dietrich frames the evening around Madame Armfeldt’s observation that the summer night smiles three times: for the young who know nothing, for fools who think they know everything and finally for the old who have learned from their mistakes. The third smile is death. It is a bleak idea delivered with elegance and the production earns it by refusing easy consolation.
MLT’s “A Little Night Music” tackles ambitious material with confidence that never tips into showiness, an evening of sophisticated musical theater that trusts its audience to engage with complex ideas about love, timing and the choices that define lives.
“A Little Night Music” runs through Feb. 1 at Marblehead Little Theatre, 12 School St. The show’s entire run is sold out. Information: mltlive.com.
