If I could play any role in any musical, it would be Desiree in

“If I could play any role in any musical, it would be Desiree in ‘A Little Night Music’—oh my, it is perfection. The character gets to be funny, beautiful, sexy and smart all at the same time and have two men fighting over her. The show is Stephen Sondheim at his absolute best... need I say more?” – Nancy Allen

In these words of Nancy Allen, there lies more than admiration for a stage role — there lies a reflection on the eternal longing of the human heart: to live fully, to embody all shades of existence — wit, beauty, desire, intellect, and love. The character of Desiree in Sondheim’s A Little Night Music is not merely a woman in a play, but an emblem of the complexity and brilliance of life itself. To wish to play her is to wish to experience the harmony of contradictions, the symphony of being both fragile and powerful, playful and profound.

Desiree, as written by Stephen Sondheim, is a creature of twilight — poised between laughter and longing, youth and wisdom, the past and the present. She is the mirror of every soul that has ever looked upon life and thought, “I have lived, I have erred, and still, I desire.” Nancy Allen, in calling this role “perfection,” does not mean flawlessness in the cold sense, but wholeness — the perfection of being fully human. For it is in the balance of humor and heartbreak, beauty and aging, love and loss, that the soul finds its truest music.

It is no coincidence that Desiree sings one of the most haunting songs ever written for the stage — “Send in the Clowns.” In it, she stands beneath the weight of her choices and the fading glow of love, and she laughs — not out of mirth, but out of understanding. Her laughter is the acceptance of imperfection, the gentle wisdom that comes when one sees that life’s greatest comedy is how seriously we take it. This, perhaps, is why Nancy Allen feels such kinship with her: for to be funny, beautiful, sexy, and smart is not to be many different things, but to be one thing deeply — alive.

The ancients too revered this kind of fullness. The Greek philosophers spoke of kalokagathia — the ideal harmony of outer beauty and inner virtue. The poets of old sang of women and men whose laughter hid tears, whose grace concealed their struggles. And even the mystics taught that the divine resides not in perfection but in wholeness — when one embraces all aspects of being without shame. Desiree is this living harmony; she embodies the truth that to be complete, one must dance between the tragic and the comic, between longing and laughter.

There is also in this quote a reverence for the artist’s craft itself. Nancy Allen praises Sondheim, saying, “it is Stephen Sondheim at his absolute best.” For indeed, Sondheim, the great weaver of emotion into melody, understood humanity’s contradictions better than most. His work did not flatter the listener with fantasy — it revealed their truth through music. In Desiree, he sculpted a woman who is not an ideal, but a mirror. And in that mirror, we see our own yearning to live with passion and grace, to still be desired and to still desire, even after the heart has been bruised by time.

But there is a lesson deeper still: the longing to play such a role is not merely about acting, but about life itself. Each of us must step upon the stage of existence and dare to be more than one thing — to be bold, to be flawed, to be both tender and strong. We must learn to laugh at our mistakes as Desiree does, to find beauty in our own imperfections, and to keep dancing though the music may change. To live fully is to act bravely in the theater of our own days.

So take this wisdom from Nancy Allen’s admiration and Sondheim’s genius: embrace every part of yourself. Be not ashamed of your humor, your intellect, your beauty, or your longing. Let them coexist, as they do within Desiree. Life, like a musical, is fleeting — but in those brief moments when you sing your truth, laugh at your missteps, and love without restraint, you touch eternity. And when the curtain falls, may you look back, smile, and whisper, “Oh my, it was perfection.”