It seems appropriate that the swan song for the much-loved but underfunded New Stage Collective should be Stephen Sondheim’s bittersweet musical, A Little Night Music. NSC announced its demise a few weeks ago but shared the good news that Night Music would still be produced, thanks to a gracious gesture by Know Theatre, which offered its Over-the-Rhine theater space for eight performances, concluding on May 10. (Before establishing NSC in its own Main Street space, NSC founder Alan Patrick Kenny served as musical director for several excellent Know productions.) Night Music features two top regional performers: Amy Warner plays Desirée Armfeldt, an aging actress, and Bruce Cromer is her once and future lover, the repressed attorney Fredrik Egerman. Both actors are multiple nominees and winners of Cincinnati Entertainment Awards. The show will be directed by Joe Deer, who knows something about musicals himself, since he chairs the musical theater program at Wright State University. Night Music is one of Sondheim’s most beloved and approachable shows, full of waltzes and arch romantic entanglements. We’re sad to see NSC depart after seven seasons, but what an elegant farewell! $20.
Read a full review here.
This article appears in Apr 22-28, 2009.
