Our love of Stephen Sondheim is approaching the “Beatlemania” section.
One wonders what the Broadway maestro would have manufactured from “Stephen Sondheim’s Old Friends,” which opened Thursday on the Ahmanson Theatre in preparation for its transfer to Broadway within the spring. A greatest-hits revue, devised by producer Cameron Waterproof coat, the celebratory present is a real embarrassment of riches.
Waterproof coat has spared no expense on an extravaganza that appears to have the whole lot however editor.
Sondheim, who died in 2021, admitted to me in a 2010 interview that he discovered these birthday live shows and tribute reveals “thrilling and embarrassing.”
“There’s an up- and downside to being venerated,” he stated. “You start to believe your own notices, and that’s very dangerous. At the same time, it does feel like it’s gold-watch time. It’s ‘Thanks so much for coming to the party.’ They’re nails in the coffin, is what they are.”
Effectively, there’s now not any fear about how all this public fanfare will have an effect on his creativity. However might all this ballyhoo sap curiosity in his work? It could be an irony worthy of Sondheim if, after a lifetime of being dismissed as too intellectual, his posthumous profession suffered from industrial overexposure.
Bernadette Peters and Lea Salonga in Stephen Sondheim’s “Old Friends.”
(Matthew Murphy)
Lea Salonga, who headlines “Stephen Sondheim’s Old Friends” alongside fellow Tony winner Bernadette Peters, is the brightest star of a manufacturing overloaded with majestic singing expertise. There’s a purity to Salonga’s lyric soprano, which fills the Ahmanson with the distinctive glow not simply of the track she occurs to be singing however of the musical from which it derives.
In “Loving You” from “Passion,” a medley from “Sweeney Todd,” “Somewhere” from “West Side Story” and most unforgettably, “Everything’s Coming Up Roses” from “Gypsy,” Salonga permits us to momentarily inhabit the area of every present, intuitively conveying what I can solely describe because the religious structure of those musical landmarks.
The format of transferring from one quantity to the subsequent in TikTok style encourages among the performers to overplay their palms. There’s a bit an excessive amount of mugging, italicizing and elbow-nudging, as if we would not have the ability to get pleasure from Sondheim’s unsparing wit on our personal.
Salonga, nevertheless, is a mannequin of restraint, permitting the lyrics to talk by means of her cautious consideration to Sondheim’s scores. Matthew Bourne appears to have lavished all his genius as a director on the elegant musical staging, leaving the actors to their very own units. However Salonga proves that much less is certainly extra when backed by belief within the materials and guided by the inventive precision of a naturally gifted marvel.
Jacob Dickey and Bernadette Peters carry out “Hello, Little Girl” in Stephen Sondheim’s “Old Friends.”
(Matthew Murphy)
Peters wasn’t in robust voice on the opening-night efficiency, and I questioned if she is likely to be scuffling with a chilly. When she got here out on the prime of the present with Salonga, the 2 elegantly decked within the deep pink of a Broadway stage curtain, the reference to the viewers was instantaneous. The ovation that erupted threatened to derail the present.
A part of the unique Broadway casts of “Sunday in the Park With George” and “Into the Woods,” Peters is among the nice Sondheim interpreters. (I nonetheless rank her efficiency in “Gypsy” up there with the very best.) There’s nobody like this kewpie triple menace, and even at half-mast she was in a position to summon among the previous magic.
“Into the Woods” occasioned Peters’ finest work, together with a duet with Salonga of “Children Will Listen” and a coup de théâtre involving Little Purple Driving Hood’s costume. A clumsily set-up “Broadway Baby” from “Follies,” wherein Peters cheekily name-checks herself, ultimately was redeemed when she was joined by different veteran troupers in leggy kick-line.
“Old Friends,” which was initially produced in London by Waterproof coat, has a title that shouldn’t be taken too actually. The corporate brings collectively totally different generations united by their devotion to Sondheim. However the extra seasoned professionals get two of the largest showstoppers. Beth Leavel delivers a defiantly louche rendition of “The Ladies Who Lunch” from “Company” and Bonnie Langford leaves all of it out on the stage in a gorgeously guttural “I’m Still Here” from “Follies.”
The banquet of gorgeous singing is simply too considerable for a whole stock. However Jeremy Secomb and Jacob Dickey’s beautiful rendition of “Pretty Women,” a lilting melody amid the murderous machinations of “Sweeney Todd,” deserves particular commendation. Jason Pennycooke makes a memorable impression in “Live Alone and Like It,” a track Sondheim wrote for the movie “Dick Tracy” that was the one one I didn’t know all of the lyrics to.
There have been a couple of disappointments alongside the way in which. Peters had solely intermittent success with “Send in the Clowns” from “A Little Night Music” and “Losing My Mind” from “Follies.” Her glints of brilliance fell wanting a flame.
Beth Leavel, Bernadette Peters, Joanna Driving carry out “You Gotta Get a Gimmick” in Stephen Sondheim’s “Old Friends.”
(Matthew Murphy)
Waterproof coat, who made his greatest-hits choice favoring these reveals he had a hand in producing, goes heavy on the comedian numbers. The second act begins to tug with slapdash vaudeville showcases that appear like sops to the performers.
Sondheim all the time insisted that his e-book writers be given equal due. Songwriting for him was an act of collaborative playwriting. His harping on this level might come throughout as doctrinaire. However as “Stephen Sondheim’s Old Friends” unwittingly betrays, songs taken out of their context don’t have the identical energy as when dramatically embedded.
Waterproof coat and Bourne mitigate the harm by grouping some songs collectively and presenting them in an ingeniously suggestive dramatic style. Matt Kinley’s shapeshifting scenic design, mixed with Warren Letton’s hypnotic lighting and Jill Parker’s swank costumes, permit scenes to emerge like an impresario’s dreamscapes.
The irreplaceable Barbara Prepare dinner put her interpretive stamp on Sondheim’s songbook in her live performance tributes, reanimating musical treasures by means of her personal introspective moonlight. The solid of “Old Friends” is simply too quite a few for that degree of private intimacy, so we’re left in a form of limbo that’s neither cabaret nor full-scale revival.
However along with Salonga’s radiant instance, there are group numbers that convey us nearer to the chic heights that Sondheim reached. “Sunday,” the culminating hymn of “Sunday in the Park With George,” closes Act 1 to magisterial impact. And “Being Alive” from “Company,” led by Dickey with hovering vocal accompaniment, takes us into the manufacturing’s rousing closing stretch.
There are glimpses of Sondheim onscreen, however this isn’t one other biographical present. It’s an overstuffed but all the time trendy homage. Whereas no substitute for the musicals themselves, the manufacturing can be cherished by these followers who have to worship repeatedly on the altar of their Broadway god.
‘Stephen Sondheim’s Outdated Mates’
The place: Ahmanson Theatre, 135 N. Grand Avenue, L.A.
When: 8 p.m. Tuesdays-Fridays, 2 and eight p.m. Saturdays, 1 and 6:30 p.m. Sundays. Ends March 9.
Tickets: Begin at $52
Information: (213) 628-2772 or centertheatregroup.org
Operating time: 2 hours, half-hour
