A Little Night Music

Original Broadway Cast

1973/1998: Sony Classical/Columbia/Legacy SK 65284

Act I

1. Overture and Night Waltz
2. Now/Later/Soon
3. The Glamorous Life
4. Remember?
5. You Must Meet My Wife
6. Liaisons
7. In Praise of Women
8. Every Day a Little Death
9. A Weekend in the Country
    

   Act II

10. Night Waltz I—The Sun Won’t Set
11. Night Waltz II—The Sun Sits Low
12. It Would Have Been Wonderful
13. Perpetual Anticipation
14. Send in the Clowns
15. The Miller’s Son
16. Finale
     

    Bonus Track

17. The Glamorous Life

I think I saw a production of this in London in 1994, but honestly that’s a blur in my memory. While “Send in the Clowns” is obviously the gem in this musical’s numbers (if not this lamentably anemic performance by Glynis Johns), for me it’s ’Remember” that most bewitches me on this recording. And “You Must Meet My Wife” is fun, sure, but “The Miller’s Son” is probably the most viscerally important song here…simultaneously laudable, enviable, tawdry, and bittersweet, nonetheless retrospectively excellent advice. Still, that advice can be equally read as wise or foolish. I’m in the Wise camp as an advocate of indulgence, because regret is too nasty a force if it’s given what-ifs to feed on instead of I-dids. “The Miller’s Son” is a reminder that we need to take what we can get while we can, to put it bluntly, and that’s no trivial observation: get you some while you still can, honey, and reconcile the rest. I didn’t act on enough of those possibilties in my life, and my life didn’t actually deliver many anyway, so the way this issue played out for me is probably moot but remains poignantly grim. Life may not provide those opportunities, but act on them then it does.

“And a girl has to celebrate what passes by.”

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Comments © 2008 Mark Ellis Walker, except as noted, and no claim is made to the images and quoted lyrics.