Performance #4 of "A Little Night Music" at the Players Guild of Dearborn

Last night's performance of Sondheim's A Little Night Music was the best one we've had to date. The audience was really with it, laughing in the right places and at the right things from the very beginning of the show.

The cast was with it, too, and did a nice of job of listening to the audience and waiting for laughs. They were also on top of most of their lines and I didn't notice any serious mistakes. Good stuff.

I thought the crew did a particularly good job of moving the set pieces on and off stage. At times it looked a little like a set piece ballet, with pieces going off on stage right while other pieces are coming on from stage left. And, when the trees move against the dimly lit background of trees, it's quite pretty. 

A lot of community theaters, especially those who put on their shows in rented venues, only do two weekends of performances. Just as they get to "know" the show, it ends. I think it takes a cast at least three or four performances to "know" a show. By that I mean, it takes a weekend to learn where the laughs are, where the dramatic moments are, where they need to speed up, where they need to slow down, etc. We're fortunate at the Guild. Owning our own space lets us do three weekends of our non-musicals and four weekends of most of our musicals. 

I think the extra mike's helped with the hearing problem, although there are still some dead spots in the auditorium. I watched the show from the lobby and could hear perfectly. People sitting in the two-seaters on the right side half way back in the house were having trouble hearing. People in the back row could hear fine. Strange. We need to get a good sound engineer in there to tell us what we need to do to fix the problem.

Eight more chances to get it right.

Click here for more information and to order tickets on-line.