I saw Night Music this week and enjoyed it. I use an only moderately enthusiastic verb because I am not wild about Sondheim's work. To me, his songs seem convoluted, structureless and only occasionally melodic, so he saves the melody-based song (as opposed to his rambling-chromatics songs) for the end, like "Bring In The Clowns".

That said, I liked ALNM a lot. Bernadette Peters IS Broadway. (Well, there's Lupone in Gypsy, who is ALSO Broadway - a performance that put Mama Rose in the same league as Medea.) I would pay to watch Peters read a phone book. Stritch is one of those performers who, no matter what the particular characteristics of the part they are playing, can't help but be themselves. Like Bogart or Tom Cruise in the movies, or Harvey Fierstein on stage. Part of the fun of an actor like that is to see how s/he nuances the self to fit the character, and I thought Stritch did it pretty well, though there wasn't a thimblefull of difference in this performance from her one-woman show of a few years back. So I love Stritch.

As to the economics.... I got a half-price ticket at TKTS for a mezzanine right section middle aisle seat, not bad. There were empty seats up where I was (a Wednesday night). I don't know if that is "normal", but the show is certainly not selling out every night. But it was a similar situation Friday night for West Side Story -- lots of decent half-priced seats and plenty unsold.