Little Night Music, A ( 2010 Broadway Cast )

This is the first Broadway revival of Stephen Sondheim's most delightfully intricate musical, a sparkling crystal chandelier of a show that the composer adapted from Ingmar Bergman's film, Smiles of a Summer Night. Catherine Zeta-Jones adds a deep-voiced, sultry dimension to the part that Glynnis Johns created in the original production (and Elizabeth Taylor acted in the film). Angela Lansbury's bittersweet recollections of romances past in the song Liaisons is one of the highlights of this 2-disc recording. The show's most memorable song remains, of course, Send In the Clowns, written hastily while the musical was previewing in Boston for Ms. Johns, who had an extremely limited range as a singer. The entire production seems to be done as a markedly slower pace than the original, which gives the listener a better opportunity to savor Sondheim's brilliant lyrical patterns.