Stephen Sondheim's Old Friends (Manhattan Theatre Club)

By Harry Forbes

That ubiquitous genre, the  Stephen Sondheim revue -- one which had its genesis in Ned Sherrin and David Kernan’s “Side by Side by Sondheim” back in 1976 -- has provided us with numberless such tributes over the years, each one worthy in its own way. And this latest, derived from the one night only all-star gala at London’s Drury Lane in 2022, is no exception. (Fittingly, original “Side by Side” star Julia McKenzie serves as Artistic Director here.)

The evening was planned in its early stages by Sondhem himself in tandem with his British producer/colleague Cameron MacIntosh who, after Sondheim’s death, followed through with shaping the project. 

After the gala, the show was reworked for a regular West End run with different cast members. Now, on Broadway, only Bernadette Peters and Bonnie Langford remain from the festive one night occasion, but Peters is joined above-the-title with Lea Salonga, along with a classy roster of West End and Broadway talent, including Kate Jennings Grant, Gavin Lee, Joanna Riding, Beth Leavel, and Kevin Earley.

Unlike Broadway’s last Sondheim anthology -- “Sondheim by Sondheim” in 2000 -- there’s little narrative here, just number after number. Nearly all the songs will be more than familiar to fans, and if the show has a fault, that may be it. But one can’t argue with the quality of the material. And the audience at the performance I attended was highly enthusiastic throughout.

Though Salonga has not particularly associated with Sondheim, that instantly changes with “Old Friends.” Not only does Salonga offer gorgeous renditions of such lyrical ballads as “Loving You” and “Somewhere,” singing with the same crystalline clarity that brought her to fame in “Miss Saigon” in 1989, but most surprisingly, she takes on the raucous Mrs. Lovett in “Sweeney Todd” and force-of-nature dynamo Rose in “Gypsy.” And she’s quite fabulous in those atypical roles. 

As for Peters, the lady remains something of a marvel. She’s retained her classic look to a remarkable degree, and the voice, some occaional strain notwithstanding, is still capable of the purity of old. Given her long and distinguished career with Sondheim, it’s goose-bump time to hear her reprise bits of her original stage roles including “Sunday in the Park with George” and “Into the Woods.” as well as roles she played in revival during the composer’s lifetime, such as “A Little Night Music” and “Follies.” Both “Send in the Clowns” from the former and “Losing My Mind” from the latter are highlights. 

The first act gives us clusters of songs from “Company,” “Into the Woods,” and “Sweeney Todd,” along with other items, including a snippet of “Bounce” done by Peters, the rarest selection of the evening. Jeremy Secomb is particularly outstanding as Sweeney Todd, a role he’s played to acclaim. And in the “Into the Woods” sequence, there’s also standout work from Jacob Dickey as the Wolf, Early and Kyle Selig as the lovelorn princes, and Jasmine Forsberg as Cinderella. 

The second act includes an amusing riff on Peters’ distinctive version of “Broadway Baby,” and a funny version of “You Gotta Have a Gimmick,” with Peters, Leavel, and Riding as decidedly over-the-hill strippers. 

There are many highlights. For starters, Langford delivers one of the very best versions of “I’m Still Here,” propulsively sung with wonderfully firm tone, though one verse has undergone a lyric change to excise dated references. Riding, still fondly remembered for her Julie in Nicholas Hytner’s production of “Carousel” at the National Theatre, delivers the tongue-twisting “Getting Married Today” with aplomb. Lee sings a venomous gender-altered “Could I Leave You?” as Kernan did years ago in “Side by Side”; Leavel makes “The Ladies Who Lunch” her own. The “Tonight Quintet” from “West Side Story” gets a particularly exciting rendition from Dickey, Daniel Yearwood, Selig, Maria Wirries, and Jasmine Forsberg. Grant’s “The Boy from…” is a hoot. And Lee, Jason Pennycooke, and Selig cavort merrily through a riotous “Everybody Ought to Have a Maid.” 

The whole is beautifully paced by director Matthew Bourne (with choreography by Stephen Mear). Stephen Brooker’s musical arrangements are excellent, under the musical supervision of Alfonso Casado Trigo. (Annbritt duChateau conducts.) 

(The Samuel J. Friedman Theatre, 261 West 47th Street; OldFriendsBroadway.com; through June 15) 

Photos by Matthew Murphy:

(Top) - Jacob Dickey and Bernadette Peters perform “Hello, Little Girl” 

(Below) - Jeremy Secomb and Lea Salonga perform “The Worst Pies in London”

The Frogs (MasterVoices)

By Harry Forbes

Once again, conductor/director Ted Sperling and his MasterVoices forces, have triumphed with a Sondheim work, after their winning “Anyone Can Whistle” last year. “The Frogs” is an anomaly in Sondheim’s catalog, hardly a traditional musical, but more a choral piece, or so it was when first performed at Yale in 1974, and later recorded by Nonesuch, though the work was given more traditional structure in its 2004 production by Lincoln Center Theater. 

Nathan Lane, who starred in that Lincoln Center mounting, and hosted the MasterVoices semi-stage concert, in fact, had adapted Burt Shevelove’s original script (based on Aristophanes’ ancient Greek comedy) for that production, and Sondheim reworked and expanded the music. The result, as the MasterVoices presentation demonstrated, was alternately hilarious and profound.

For this past weekend’s three-performance run, the blue-chip cast members excelled in their respective roles. 

Douglas Sills took on Lane’s original part of Dionysos, the god of Theater and Wine, with distinction. In brief, Dionysus travels to Hades with his slave Xanthias (a funny Kevin Chamberlin) in order to bring George Bernard Shaw back to earth to help mankind. But after a competition between Shaw and Shakespeare (Eurpides and Aeschylus in the source material), the Bard’s poetic skill wins the day. Shaw was persuasively embodied by Dylan Baker who delivered a masterful recitation of one of St. Joan’s fervent speeches, while Jordan Donica offered a beautifully spoken Will Shakespeare and sang Sondheim’s moving setting of “Fear No More” gorgeously.

Marc Kudisch was in fine form as Dionysos’s preening half-brother Heracles (aka Hercules), flexing his muscles and, at one point, easing down into an impressive split. Chuck Cooper was most amusing as boatman Charon who rows the pair across the River Styx. And Peter Bartlett was a hoot recreating his 2004 role as the campiest of Plutos, delivering each line for maximum drollery. Candice Corbin had a brief but deeply moving turn as Dionysos’ late wife Ariadne. 

Lainie Sakakura devised some very apt choreography for the excellent dancers who played the eponymous frogs and Dionysian revelers. 

Though apart from the very funny “Invocation and Instructions to the Audience” (here updated with the inclusion of, among other annoyances, a cell phone admonition), none of the other numbers have gotten much stand-alone play. Still, every song in the show bears that treasurable Sondheim stamp, with unmistakable echoes of tunes from the better-known Sondheim classics.

Sperling’s conducting was expertly attuned to Sondheim’s musical language,  while the MasterVoices chorus sounded glorious, positioned, as they were, on three tiers. The whole enterprise made an even better case for the show than what I remembered seeing at the Vivian Beaumont 20 years ago.

The score, nicely varied, and at times as stirring as the great "Sunday" ensemble in “Sunday in the Park with George,” was a pleasure to hear, especially when performed so definitively. 

Lane’s narration, which began with a brief history of the show and his involvement in it, was expertly done, and never detracted but only enhanced the centerstage action. 

(Rose Theater, Jazz at Lincoln Center; 10 Columbus Circle;; mastervoices.org; Nov. 3 & 4 only)

Photo by Erin Baiano: (l.-r.) Marc Kudisch, Kevin Chamberlin, and Douglas Sills

Merrily We Roll Along (New York Theatre Workshop)

By Harry Forbes

The latest revival of Stephen Sondheim’s 1981 Broadway failure proves, yet again, that the work, adapted by George Furth from a 1934 play by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart, is -- divorced from Hal Prince’s original misguided staging with its hugely talented but as-yet-unseasoned cast of young people wearing sweatshirts -- an eminently viable one, with a pearly and highly accessible score. 

New York Theatre Workshop’s production is essentially a reworking of the one director Maria Friedman mounted in London’s Menier Chocolate Factory (later moved to the West End and streamed) in 2012. Here, it’s ideally cast with Jonathan Groff, Daniel Radcliffe, and Lindsay Mendez as the three bosom buddies -- composer Franklin Shepard, playwright/lyricist Charley Kringas, and novelist/theater critic Mary Flynn respectively --  whose deep friendship ends in tatters because of composer Frank’s selling out for success, and his weakness for the femme fatale wife Gussie (Kyrstal Joy Brown) of his producer Joe Josephson (superb Reg Rogers).  

Of course, as the script moves backward in time -- with its score cleverly constructed in like manner so that reprises of songs come before we hear the full number -- the acrimonious and downright ugly outbursts of the opening scene give way to the joyous optimism of youth. And the show does perforce end happily, even as we’re poignantly aware of what’s fated for the future.

Groff sings beautifully, but every bit as impressive as his vocalizing is his mature dramatic performance, displaying impressive gravitas throughout and youthening convincingly from the shallow Hollywood power player to the idealistic dreamer of the earlier scenes. 

The same is true for Mendez whose vitriolic drunken outburst in the early party scene gives way to the empathetic, hugely likable friend who inwardly pines for Frank. But Frank, in turn, will fall in love with Beth (Katie Rose Clarke), and then abandon her for Gussie. 

Radcliffe goes from strength to strength with each new stage appearance. After his starring role in “How To Succeed in Business” revival in 2011, it’s no surprise he can sing but here, he convincingly captures the likability and snowballing frustration as he helplessly watches Frank repeatedly make the wrong choices. He forcefully nails the anger of his raging “Franklin D. Shepard” number. 

Now truthfully, every one of the revivals I’ve encountered since the premiere -- York in 1994, Encores in 2012, and Fiasco in 2019, and even an early barebones basement production at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival -- has demonstrated the show’s dramatic and musical strengths. But good as they all were, this one may be the best of all, anchored as it is by such a well played depiction of Frank, Charley, and Mary’s friendship. It makes their eventual dissolution all the more of a gut punch.

Friedman, who played Mary in the 1992 Hampstead Theatre production in Leicester, clearly knows the material inside and out, and directs with a sure hand. 

Soutra Gilmour’s set design is mostly functional for the myriad scene changes) but, augmented by Amith Chandrashaker’s lighting, it works effectively. Gilmour’s costumes are period perfect as the action backtracks from 1980 to 1958.

Music Director Alvin Hough, Jr. leads a nine-piece band in a satisfying reduction of Jonathan Tunick’s orchestration, boosted by Kai Harada’s sound design.  (Catherine Jayes is music supervisor.) The big numbers like “Good Thing Going,” “Not a Day Goes By,” “Our Time,” and “Old Friends” all receive splendid treatment, and the lesser known ones such as “Growing Up,” “It’s a Hit!” and “The Blob” play more effectively than ever. 

The coming Broadway transfer of this sterling revival will perhaps put to rest once and for all any notion of the show being in any way Sondheim’s problem child. 

(New York Theatre Workshop, 79 East 4th Street; nytw.org; through January 22)

Photo by Joan Marcus: (l.-r.) Lindsay Mendez, Jonathan Groff, Daniel Radcliffe

Into the Woods (St. James Theatre)

By Harry Forbes

It seemed a foregone conclusion that the ecstatically received final production of this past season’s Encores -- the first under the aegis of new Artistic Director Lear DeBessonet -- would make the leap to Broadway, and indeed -- like “Wonderful Town,” “Finian’s Rainbow,” “Gypsy,” and most profitably, “Chicago” -- so it has, first for an announced limited eight-week run, and now extended for a further eight weeks. 

When Encores chose Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s “Into the Woods” as the third show of its 2022 season, there was no harsher critic than I in grousing that such a familiar show -- and one that had no less than two admirable New York revivals during the past decade (The Public’s in 2012, Roundabout/Fiasco’s in 2014), not to mention Rob Marshall’s excellent film also in 2014 -- was off mission for a series dedicated to rarely heard American musicals. And I still believe that is so.

However, one can’t argue with success and quality, for after launching the season with the mediocre “Tap Dance Kid,” and a dispiriting reworking of “The Life,” Ms. DeBessonet herself did an absolutely splendid job directing “Into the Woods,” beautifully cast across the board, and revelatory in much of its detail.

Not all of the City Center cast were available to make the transition, but the newbies are a distinguished lot: Brian Darcy James (vocally and dramatically reliable as always) as the Baker, Patina Miller (alternately forceful and tender) as the Witch, Joshua Henry (demonstrating his rarely seen comic chops) as Rapunzel’s Prince, Aymee Garcia (appropriately fraught) as Jack’s Mother, and Nancy Opel (amusing) as Cinderella’s Stepmother. At the reviewed performance, Phillipa Soo as Cinderella was out, but her excellent understudy Diane Phelan delivered a finely sung portrayal. Alysia Velez handled Rapunzel’s ethereal vocalise well. Gavin Creel as Cinderella’s Prince and the Wolf was on temporary leave, but was replaced by the estimable Cheyenne Jackson no less.

Of the Encores veterans, Sara Bareilles returned for her truly outstanding turn as the Baker’s Wife, skillfully adjusting her performance for a different chemistry than she had with City Center’s Neil Patrick Harris. David Patrick Kelly struck absolutely the right tone as the Narrator/Mysterious Man. Julia Lester was even more riotous as a bloodthirsty Little Red Ridinghood. Cole Thompson was very appealing as Jack, delivering a fine “Giants in the Sky.” Other welcome returning cast members were Ta’Nika Gibson as Lucinda, Annie Golden as Cinderella’s Mother, Granny, and the voice of the Giant, Brooke Ishibashi as Florinda, Albert Guerzon as Cinderella’s Father, and David Turner as the Steward.

 

Every one of the musical numbers was afforded an outstanding interpretation: Bareilles’ “Moments in the Woods; her duet with James, “It Takes Two”; his “No More,” sung with Kelly; Miller’s “Stay With Me”; Jackson and Henry’s “Agony”; and Lester’s “I Know Things Now” were all strongly delivered. So it's good news that a CD of this cast will be forthcoming.

 

The comedy seemed a bit broader than at Encores, but that’s my only small carp as it’s only a subtle shift in that direction. Lorin Latarro created the witty choreography

 

The production team was again excellent. David Rockwell’s relatively spare but clever scenic design, lit by Tyler Micoleau, was just as it was on the City Center stage. Andrea Hood’s costumes were fairy tale perfect.  Scott Lehrer & Alex Neumann’s sound design was exemplary: cleanly focused and beautifully balanced, a rarity these days. James Ortiz’s puppet design, most especially the scene-stealing cow Milky White (wittily manipulated by puppeteer Kennedy Kanagawa) was a delight, and Cookie Jordan’s Hair, Wigs & Makeup were other strong elements including Miller’s transformation from old crone Witch to glamorpuss was deftly handled.

This first New York production of a Sondheim musical produced after his death last November was received with rock concert appreciation from the moment the curtain rose, rousing affirmation of the show’s popularity and the general buzz about this production, and continued unabated throughout the evening. 

Outgoing Encores Musical Director Rob Berman led an orchestra attuned to every nuance in the score. 

Even as “Into the Woods” would seem to indicate there can be no fairy tale happy endings, its themes of forgiveness and tolerance are the more predominant takeaway, and as such, apart from its considerable entertainment value, the revival is most judiciously timed and welcome. 

(St. James Theatre, 246 West 44th Street; intothewoodsbway.com; through October 16)

Photo by Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman for Murphy Made: Sara Bareilles & Brian D’arcy James