JesusChrist in a hayloft, if you're up there, I want to come back in my nextlife as Dame
Angela Lansbury, preferably in her current
late-period, do-no-wrong stage.
She was eclectic -- sorry,
electric -- last night onstage at the Walter Kerr for the
Catherine Zeta-Jones-helmed revival of Sondheim's Scandinavian musical,
A Little Night Music. Lansbury's Mme. Armfeldt, a salty dowager given to reminiscing on her sweeter,sexier days, could barely get a line out without spontaneous applauseand cheering (even when she tripped over one or two of those lines).
A Little Night Music, see, is all about how far afield sex leadseven the wisest and most jaded among us, into which latter camp Mme.Armfeldt now finds herself. Things ain't what they used to be, says theformer lover of the Belgian king and countless counts. As she sings:
What once was a rare Champagne is now just an amiable hock,
What once was a villa at least, is digs,
What once was a gown with a train is now just a simple little frock,
What once was a sumptuous feast is figs--no, not even figs--raisins!
Ah, liaisons...
Whatabout that frock, now? In this production, it ain't so little, and itain't so simple. Set and costume designer
David Farley has kitted Angieout in a high-necked, turn-of-the-century dress, not couture by anymeans, but glittering and chic all the same in dusty black. In fact,most of the cast spends the first act in ebony, before switching afterintermission to country-proper creams. (Dame Angie accessorizes with aface full of white pancake makeup, a look perfected by Mexican wrestlersand Victorian ghosts.)
If these country looks -- the pinafores, the bustles and frills, the softcream and even soft black -- look familiar, it may be because they're thevision of the moment at Chanel.
Karl Lagerfeld took a turn round thebarn for his
Spring 2010 collection for the house,and the results could walk from his hay-strewn Paris catwalk right ontothe stage at the Walter Kerr--or those from there onto his. Theblack-white-and-beige palate, the swinging skirts, the shining brassbuttons on military-man Carl-Magnus' jacket--they're all there in HerrKarl's show, too. Frisky servant-wench Petra (
Leigh Ann Larkin) even,in her 11 o'clock aria "The Miller's Son" looks a little like
HeidiMount in the
Fall Chanel ad campaign after a good roll in the dirt. (The subject exactly, as it happens, of the song.) Who says Broadway's dying?
Mais non, c'est on trend--and no one, but
no one, accuses Der Lagerfeld of being a mere
raisin.
SoMme. Armfeldt -- is she wrong? She's right about one thing: Things ain'twhat they used to be. This time around, they're even chicer.
