A Little Sondheim Music

by Frank Furnari, New Rep Review

Marry Me A Little presents a great, short (75 minutes with no intermission) evening of Sondheim music that is bound to delight Sondheim fans.  The numbers are uninterrupted by dialogue or a story line like other Sondheim reviews – the focus here is on the songs and the stories told through them.  The numbers, except for the title song are all ones that did not make it into other Sondheim musicals; so they may not be familiar to many.  One may not normally want to hear songs that didn’t make it into a musical, but this is Sondheim, so even the ones that didn’t make the cut are still great numbers.   New Rep’s production is a little different than traditional productions in that it is a cast of four – two men, two women rather the normal one man, one woman.  This allows the production to have three couples, one straight, one gay, one lesbian (this change was blessed by Sondheim) to reflect today’s reality.

Director Ilyse Robbins assembles a strong cast for this production of both New Rep favorites, Aimee Doherty, Brad Daniel Peloquin who was in New Rep’s Moby Dick, as well as two new faces to the New Rep stage – Erica Spyres and Phil Tayler.  Each of the actors delivers a great performance and has a few moments to really shine. 

This reviewer is a little conflicted about this production – there are some things that worked and others that weren’t as strong for me.  Of the things that really worked was the fact that each actor always had stuff to do even if it wasn’t their number.  Since the actors are on stage for the entire production, it really gives you the sense that you’re looking into each person’s apartment as they’re living their lives.  It added a nice layer to the performance.  The part that didn’t work so well for me was the staging - except for a few moments in the show, the actors were never physically together when singing their songs.  To me, it never really established the couples. The rest of the production, however, is very solid.  I’ve heard many of the songs before, but I’ve never seen a production of this piece before.

Musically, the show is very tight, there are two pianos on either side of the stage and one of the actors, Erica Spyres plays violin in a few of the numbers from her apartment.  Even though they are all separated, the musicians and the singers are always in perfect sync.  Speaking of the singers, they are all very good and while they were wearing microphones, it seemed as if they weren’t being used.  The mics was often not needed, but it would have been useful in the numbers when all the actors are singing as they weren’t well balanced since some were closer to the audience than others. 

All of the technical parts of the production were flawless.  Erik D. Diaz’s bi-level set beautifully depicted four New York City apartments, each with its own distinct style.  Joe Stallone’s properties design made them all feel like they had been lived in for some time.  Christopher Ostrom’s lighting design and David Reiffel’s sound design added additional layers to the production, greater enhancing the reality on stage.