Two of composer Stephen Sondheim’s brightest stars, Bernadette Peters and Elaine Stritch, will shine on Broadway this summer in Trevor Nunn's revival of A Little Night Music. Although the show (and its Tony-nominated stars Catherine Zeta-Jones and Angela Lansbury) had set a June 20 closing date, the production will now resume performances at the Walter Kerr Theatre on July 13 with Peters as Desiree Armfeldt and Stritch as her wheelchair-bound mother. The theater will be dark for three weeks while the new stars prepare to join the cast.
A Tony Award winner for Song and Dance and Annie Get Your Gun, Peters received Tony nominations for Gypsy, The Goodbye Girl, Sondheim's Sunday in the Park with George, Mack & Mabel and On the Town and won a Theatre World Award for George M. Other Broadway credits include the original cast of Sondheim's Into the Woods and her debut 50 years ago in The Most Happy Fella. She received a Golden Globe for the feature film Pennies from Heaven and has a recurring role in Ugly Betty. Peters co-founded the all-star animal adoption event Broadway Barks with Mary Tyler Moore and is the author of a best-selling children’s book of the same name. She has released six solo albums and is a popular concert artist.
Stritch won a Tony for her Broadway stage memoir Elaine Stritch at Liberty, and starred on the Rialto in Sondheim's Company, The Little Foxes, Bus Stop, A Delicate Balance, Sail Away and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? She most recently appeared on stage in Paper Mill Playhouse's production of The Full Monty. An Emmy winner, for the television broadcast of At Liberty, she has appeared in the films A Farewell to Arms, Providence, Cocoon: The Return, September, Out to Sea, Krippendorf's Tribe, An Unexpected Wife, Small Time Crooks, Autumn in New York and Monster-In-Law. The actress most recently headlined at Cafe Carlyle in an evening of Sondhem songs.
Based on Ingmar Bergman's film Smiles of a Summer Night, A Little Night Music is set in a weekend country house in late 19th century Sweden, bringing together surprising liaisons, long simmering passions, and a taste of love's endless possibilities. The story centers on the elegant actress Desirée Armfeldt and the spider's web of sensuality, intrigue, and desire that surrounds her. The Sondheim score features one of the composer's best-known songs, "Send in the Clowns," as well as "Every Day a Little Death," "The Miller's Son," and "A Weekend in the Country."
The revival of A Little Night Music opened at the Walter Kerr Theatre on December 13. In addition to Zeta-Jones and Lansbury, the production currently stars Alexander Hanson as Fredrik Egerman, Aaron Lazar as Count Carl-Magnus Malcolm, Erin Davie as Countess Charlotte Malcolm, Leigh Ann Larkin as Petra, Hunter Ryan Herdlicka as Henrik Egerman and Ramona Mallory as Anne Egerman. The cast also includes Stephen R. Buntrock, Bradley Dean, Marissa McGowan, Katherine McNamara, Betsy Morgan, Jayne Paterson, Kevin David Thomas, Keaton Whittaker, Karen Murphy, Erin Stewart, Kevin Vortmann.