Will Angela Lansbury Have a Liaison with Night Music on Broadway?
Will five-time Tony winner Angela Lansbury play Madame Armfeldt in the Trevor Nunn-directed production of Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler’s A Little Night Music? The production, which is headed for Broadway, is eyeing a December opening.
Madame Armfeldt is an aging grande dame, who counts kings among her former lovers. Confined to a wheelchair, she laments bygone delicacies in matters of the heart and offers odd but pragmatic advice to her granddaughter Fredrika. She is the mother of Desiree, a self-absorbed actress.
Lansbury won a 2009 Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play for her current role in Blithe Spirit, which ends its limited Broadway engagement on July 19. She has also received Tony Awards for Sweeney Todd, Gypsy, Dear World and Mame. Her stellar stage career also includes the Broadway productions of A Little Family Business, The King and I, Anyone Can Whistle, A Taste of Honey and Hotel Paradiso. During a long film career, Lansbury received Oscar nominations for The Manchurian Candidate, The Picture of Dorian Gray and Gaslight. From 1984-1996 Lansbury starred as mystery-writing sleuth Jessica Fletcher on Murder, She Wrote, for which she won four Golden Globe Awards.
A Little Night Music is based on the Ingmar Bergman film Smiles of a Summer Night. Set in Sweden at the turn of the century, it follows three lovestruck couples as they lose, and find, each other during a long midsummer night on a country estate. The original production, which starred Len Cariou, Glynis Johns, Patricia Elliot, Hermione Gingold and Laurence Guittard, opened at the Shubert Theatre on February 25, 1973, later transferred to the Majestic Theatre and played a total of 601 performances, before closing on August 3, 1974. It won five Tony Awards, including Best Musical. A benefit concert version of the show was presented by the Roundabout Theatre Company in January, starring Vanessa Redgrave, the late Natasha Richardson, Victor Garber, Christine Baranski, Jill Paice and Marc Kudisch.
Nunn directed A Little Night Music at the Menier Chocolate Factory in December, transferring it to the West End in early April. The show, which closes in London on July 25, features John Addison as Mr. Erlanson, Laura Armstrong as Mrs. Anderssen, Jessie Buckley as Anne Egerman, Lynden Edwards as Mr. Lindquist, Kaisa Hammarlund as Petra, Alexander Hanson as Fredrik Egerman, Maureen Lipman as Madame Armfeldt, Kelly Price as Countess Charlotte Malcolm, Alistair Robins as Count Carl-Magnus Malcolm, Nicola Sloane as Mrs. Segstrom, Gabriel Vick as Henrik Egerman and Hannah Waddingham as Desiree Armfeldt. Holly Hallam and Grace Link alternate the role of Fredrika Armfeldt.
Waddingham, who won a Broadway.com Audience Award for playing the Lady of the Lake in Broadway's Spamalot, is reportedly under strong consideration to reprise her role on Broadway.
No official casting for the Broadway production has been confirmed.
