Sondheim, nicely acquired

Let’s begin by offering competing viewpoints on the Stephen Sondheim musical, “A Little Night Music,” at the Coeur d’Alene Summer Theatre.

Mine: This is a well-done, well-sung, artistically rewarding version of a modern classic.

The anonymous couple sitting next to me: (at intermission) “Do you like this? Me neither. Let’s get out of here.”

So it was clear that Sondheim is an acquired taste. So let me state my position: Sondheim is a taste that I have acquired.

I believe his musicals are deeper, more complex and more intellectually stimulating than the average musical. “A Little Night Music,” while one of his seemingly frothier offerings, is no exception.

It’s like “Masterpiece Theatre” meets Broadway.

The plummy accents, the 19th-century manners and the various counts and countesses will be enough to scare off people who, reasonably, prefer their musical farces to be free of references to Stendhal, de Maupassant and de Sade. And I will admit that the first act was lacking in the raucous humor associated with farce.

It’s based on Ingmar Bergman’s classic film, “Smiles of a Summer Night,” about a collection of upper-class Swedes who are gathered together for a party in the country.

It begins with beautifully costumed characters waltzing around a grandly decorated room. Many of the songs in the first act are full of more angst than humor. It also didn’t help that the lyrics to the first big number, “Now,” sung by the main character, Fredrik, a lawyer, were tough to decipher. We can’t laugh at jokes that we can’t make out.

It seemed more like a gloomy Swedish movie about the impossibility of happiness than a bedroom farce.

But then, after intermission, director Roger Welch’s comic plan unfolded. The action moved outdoors into a garden party. The countess (played to sardonic perfection by Tamara Schupman) drank too much champagne and started groping the lawyer. The lawyer’s sexually frustrated son had a tantrum and broke his glass. The pompous dragoon started ordering his wife around as if she were a foot-soldier.

In other words, “A Little Night Music” became what it really is, a comedy about marriage, adultery and the crazy trajectory of love.

The second act also shows off Sondheim the lyricist, with lines like these, delivered expertly by the brilliant Meghan Maddox Whitaker about the fleeting nature of youthful pleasure: “It’s a very short road / from the pinch and the punch / to the paunch and the pouch / and the pension.”

And the second act also includes the touching and beautifully delivered song, “Send in the Clowns.” In the pensive, half-spoken version by Maggie Stenson, this was the show’s musical high point as well as its dramatic climax.

Stenson, Whitaker and Schupman were particular standouts in a cast that was loaded with actors who are good at comedy, and who also have the national-class singing voices to handle Sondheim’s complex songs. Those included Kirk Mouser as the lawyer Fredrik, Joy Martin as the virginal wife (yes, you read that right) Anne, Sharva Maynard as the wise and worldly Madame Armfeldt, Savannah Larson as young Fredrika, and Luke Vroman as the conflicted son, Henrik.

The musical quality of this cast was shown off in the first act by Mouser and Stenson in the dueling comical duet, “You Must Meet My Wife.” The 14-piece orchestra, directed by Todd Robinson, delivered phrases both rich and delicate.

Still, what I’ll remember from this elegant production is Stenson’s “Send in the Clowns,” which, in its dramatic context, takes on new meaning. No matter how many times you have heard this song in a piano bar, you have never heard it like this.