by Rob Kendt
I once confessed to the brilliant, perpetually employed sound
designer John Zalewski that I didn't much care for a particular show to which
he'd lent his sonic acumen, and he replied: "Which night did you see it?
I'm obsessed with which nights people see plays, because they can be totally
different one to the next."
This is something we critics hear all the time. About a show we
didn't like, we're assured that yes, that performance was off; you should have
seen it whenÉ The tone of excuse-making may put us off, and, of course, there's
no way to second-guess which night will be better. We see whatever performances
we can manage and call it like we see it, trying to forgive opening-night
jitters and see the production's intention through its execution, to see the
play through the production. But this is live theatre we cover, after allÑan
ephemeral art made anew each night by fallible humansÑand no stage play is a
fixed, immutable artifact. A show can wobble one night and soar the next.
Case in point: Interact Theatre Company's tremendous, finely honed
production of Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler's bittersweet marzipan, A
Little Night Music, which I saw late in its run. In his review, our own Les Spindle
found director John Rubinstein's production tiring and ill-conceived. Why such
a difference? Interacters have confided that the press nightÑwhich The Times' Philip
Brandes also attendedÑwas indeed lugubrious and subpar. But while both Brandes
and Spindle praised the show's incisive acting, both found it wanting in the
music department, which Brandes forgave and Spindle could not, given that the
characterizations and story of Night Music are integrally linked to one
of Sondheim's most pristine scores.
All I can say is: The acting remains razor-sharp, funny, rueful,
and movingly human-scaled. And the music must have improvedÑa lotÑsince
opening. Apart from "Liaisons," in which tempo is as much a problem
as pitch, Sondheim's score is served with all the precision and passion of the
first-rate chamber music that it is.
More importantly, the acting is often at its best in the musical
numbers, and here's where this Night Music joins some privileged company:
that of other knockout Sondheim productions in tiny L.A. theatres, in which
every word can be acted and heard, every nuance of underscoring staged. The
effect, with a composer/dramatist of such lapidary talent, is a richly layered
aesthetic satisfaction few musicals offer, let alone straight plays. Actors'
Co-Op's magical Into the Woods, East West Players' brooding Sweeney
Todd, West Coast Ensemble's breezy Company, Colony
Studio Theatre's sleek, definitive Putting It Together, and this new
Little Night Music have, over the years, made a string of pearls in this town's
scrappy, talent-rich small-theatre scene. Anyone for a citywide Sondheim
repertory festival? Interact's Night Music closes July 28.
IN THE ARENA: Speaking of Zalewski, he'll
reportedly make a rare onstage appearance in director Jessica Kubzansky's
September production of The Servant of Two Masters at
International City Theatre. Live sound-making is a natural for commedia, of
course, and it will be Zalewski's shortest commute to work in a long time: He
and ICT reside in underrated Long Beach.
I spoke to Kubzansky last month, just after her pained, sexy
production of Anatol for Buffalo Nights Theatre Co. had closed. She
was about to jet east to direct The Pirates of Penzance at Boston's
Publick Theatre, and mentioned that Moscow, the 1998 musical by Nick
Salamone and Maury R. McIntyre that she directed for Playwrights' Arena at the
Lee Strasberg Theatre, would be heading to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe this
summer, after a one-night benefit at Los Angeles Theatre Center, this Saturday,
July 28.
This is also closing weekend for Playwrights' Arena's LATC
production of Luis Alfaro's willfully perverse Bitter Homes and Gardens, which has
some of David Lindsay-Abaire's dubious joy in dysfunction, sprinkled with
sanctimony (news flash: the American suburban dream is a phony commercial!).
The best things about Jon Lawrence Rivera's well-heeled production are Rachel
Hauck's set, as fondly creepy as a Lyn Foulkes installation, and Ivonne Coll's
hysterical performance as an agoraphobe matriarchÑLaura and Amanda Wingfield
rolled into one tortilla. Stripped of too many self-justifying monologues and
given the undergirding of plot, Alfaro's Homes could be a
nice piece of surreal estate.