Nevertheless, the theatre will use its new technology and the
set does not have to run away with the show. South Pacificwas
one of the first musicals to abandon the in-one convention in
favor of fluid set changes in view of the audience, but Rodgers
and Hammerstein were careful to underscore the changes so
that orchestration would lead the way from one set to another.
Hal Prince and Sondheim emphasize musical performance
while the set pieces are gliding about in A Little Night Music.
There are trees visible throughout the entire show, hinting that
behind the urban interiors of act 1 there is a pastoral magic that
the weekend in the country will bring about in act 2. In the pas-
toral scenes of act 2, groves of trees can turn, hiding someone
and revealing someone else. It is the obscuring and disclosing
of characters that matter in the Sondheim/Prince method, not
the mystifying movement of the set pieces themselves. When
the trees turn to occlude Henrik and Anne making love and re-
veal Petra and Frid doing much the same thing (act 2, scene 7),
the lovemaking is the important thing—plus the change from
book to number, for Petra is not only making love to Frid, she
is also singing about making love to many more men, in “The
Miller’s Son.” These ubiquitous trees are like the ubiquitous
lieder singers who can peer in on any scene while belonging to
none of them. The singers are another Sondheim variation on
the issue of the omniscient character, for they seem all-knowing
and a bit weird (“Who are these klutzes?” Sondheim’s agent
Flora Roberts said when she first saw them).^13 But they are
not primarily narrative in their presence. They are singers, and
their role is to weave their numbers into a perspective of uncan-
niness for the show. Together with the always-present trees,
they create a fluid stage space that in act 2 can be anywhere or
everywhere on the Armfeldt estate.^14
NARRATION AND TECHNOLOGY 159
(^13) Zadan, Sondheim & Co., p. 186.
(^14) Prince compared this to a film effect: “The last scene in Night Music,
which takes place everywhereon the estate, appears to be happening only on
the lawn. What no one else realizes is that the young wife and her stepson are
running along a hall and down an alley and off to the country. Desiree is hav-
ing her scene with her lover in her bedroom. The countess and Fredrik are
having a conversation on the lawn....It’s actually a situation that can’t be