The omicron variant has thrust creatives and hospitality industry workers into yet another period of uncertainty. If you’re staying in more, now’s a great time to buy a gift certificate from your favorite bar or order merch from your favorite local musician. If you’re going out, may we suggest that you booster up, mask up, have that vaccination card ready and tip well? Gathering safely for live performance is a work in progress; be on the lookout for cancellations, policy changes or date changes, and handle them with all the grace you can summon.
‘A LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC’
WEDNESDAY 2/2-SATURDAY 2/12. Argenta Community Theater.
Taking an audience’s expectations and turning them on their head is damn-near mandatory for musicals these days, but the element of surprise was never so baked into the genre’s ethos as it is post-Sondheim. Maybe that’s why it’s so astounding that Sondheim — the very same Sondheim that shouted “Variety, variety, variety!” at Lin-Manuel Miranda during the incubation of “Hamilton” — penned “A Little Night Music” almost entirely in waltz meter. As famous for its rapturous melodies as for its technical challenges, “A Little Night Music” was already in the works for Argenta Community Theater when Sondheim’s death last November sent ripples of loss and outpourings of appreciation through musical theater’s throngs of devotees, though its timing is bound to make “Send in the Clowns” ring a little more bittersweetly.
The North Little Rock community theater company has developed a reputation for casting Little Rock’s best, and with polished performers like Kathryn Pryor, Karen Q. Clark and Judy Trice among the players, Sondheim’s lusty Swedish serenade is in good hands.
Get tickets at argentacommunitytheater.org, and check the theater’s COVID protocols below before you go:
Proof of vaccination including a booster dose if eligible OR proof of negative COVID-19 test within 72 hours of attendance will be required for all performances until further notice. All audience members will be required to wear a mask unless actively eating or drinking. Children under the age of 12 will be permitted to attend, but must wear a mask.