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'''''[[A Little Night Music''']]'' is a musical with music and lyrics by [[Stephen Sondheim]] and book by Hugh Wheeler, [[All Musicals Are Adaptations|based on]] the Ingmar Bergman film ''Smiles of a Summer Night''. The score is notable for having been written almost entirely in waltz time (3/4) or multiples thereof, and is considered one of Sondheim's greatest works (it's also one of the lightest and most accessible, ''[[A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum|Forum]]'' and ''[[Into the Woods]]'' aside, which makes it a great introduction for nascent Sondheim fans). It is a concerns a series of interconnected [[Love Triangle|Love Triangles]]s, which end up resolving themselves on a summer's night.
 
The plot, set in Sweden around 1900, is centered around a rekindled romance between just-barely-fading starlet Desiree Armfeldt and newly re-married lawyer Fredrik Egerman. Fredrik is married to a ''much'' younger woman, Anne, who is the subject of his son Henrik's adoration; Desiree is having an affair with a married dragoon, Carl-Magnus, whose wife Charlotte knows Anne through her younger sister. Eventually they all end up at Desiree's mother's house in the country. [[Hilarity Ensues|Hilarity]] ([[Crowning Music of Awesome|among other things]]) [[Hilarity Ensues|Ensues]].
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* [[The Loins Sleep Tonight]] - Poor, poor Henrik.
* [[Love Dodecahedron]] - Except it's not a complicated jumble so much as an extensive line: Charlotte <-> Carl-Magnus <-> Desiree <-> Fredrik <-> Anne <-> Henrik <-> Petra <-> Frid
** This line is also a series of interlocking [[Love Triangle|Love Triangles]]s, with Carl-Magnus, Desiree, Fredrik, Anne, Henrik and Petra each forming the apex of a [[Triang Relations|Type 7 love triangle]], in which those either side of them on the line are the other corners. Charlotte also attempts to make Fredrik the third corner of a love triangle with Carl-Magnus and herself at one point.
* [[Love Hurts]]
* [[May-December Romance]] - However, {{spoiler|Anne and Fredrik don't end up together, and this is portrayed as a good thing}}.
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* [[Patter Song]] - "Now".
* [[Rule of Three]] - The whole work is structured around threes and triangles. The music is mostly in waltz time ('''3'''/4) or variations thereof. The cast is, apart from Madame Armfeldt and Fredrika, structured into a series of interlocking love triangles (see [[Love Dodecahedron]] above). There are songs sung by three people ("Now/Later/Soon"), and songs sung by two people about a third person ("You Must Meet My Wife" and "It Would Have Been Wonderful" most prominently). The summer night smiles three times.
** In original orchestrator Jonathan Tunick's foreword in the published script of the show, he takes this a step further, saying how the show is about the unstable three progressing into the stable two—bytwo--by the end all of the love triangles are resolved.
** The original idea for the show was to go through the story three times - once as a tragedy (which would've ended with Henrik committing suicide), once as a farce, and one final time where everything goes properly.
* [[Sex Is Evil and I Am Horny]] - Henrik does a very bad job of abstaining from the "devil's snares".
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