Director Trevor Nunn ends 2008 as he began it: in Ingmar Bergman territory, now moving from the bleakness of Scenes From A Marriage to the relatively upbeat Smiles Of A Summer Night .
Only relatively, of course: this being Bergman - and moreover being Stephen Sondheim's musical version - the smiles are always going to be rueful, wistful or -ful of something else to modulate them into a minor key. Indeed, the one perfect marriage here, amid the tangle of wed and unwed couples, is that of Bergman and Sondheim. The composer's sensibility may often seem Upper West Side Manhattan to the bone, but it meshes beautifully with the Nordic fatalism of the story. As Maureen Lipman's Madame Armfeldt advises her granddaughter: "Never marry or even dally with a Scandinavian."
