Stephen Sondheim’s Old Friends: a knockout tribute to the master of musicals
One night just wasn’t enough. Happily, Cameron Mackintosh’s all-star revue tribute to the late Stephen Sondheim, a one-off event in 2022, has returned for a full run. Gone are celebrity cameos (Judi Dench, Damian Lewis), but in their place is a slicker and a more evidently company endeavour, with noted stage names generously trading the spotlight. It’s the musical theatre equivalent of the superhero team-up.
Broadway icon and key Sondheim collaborator Bernadette Peters is the big draw, making her belated West End debut at the age of 75. She burrows inside the material, whether conveying Little Red Riding Hood’s bittersweet coming-of-age discoveries (from Into the Woods) or, at the other end of the spectrum, the sophisticate’s gut-wrenching regrets in A Little Night Music’s Send in the Clowns. But multiple performers get their show-stopping moment in Matthew Bourne and Julia McKenzie’s beautifully balanced production.
Bonnie Langford, who really is the toiling trouper incarnate, makes Follies’ showbiz survivor anthem I’m Still Here a turbo-charged triumph, while, from that same show, Jason Pennycooke delivers a frenzied, tour-de-force Buddy’s Blues and Gavin Lee relishes the biting sarcasm of Could I Leave You?. Joanna Riding aces the panicked patter song Getting Married Today from Company, and Janie Dee reduces everyone to hysterics with the tongue-twisting parody The Boy From….
However, the revelation is the remarkably versatile Lea Salonga, who got her start as the original Kim in Miss Saigon. Her voice is exquisitely pure – she hits every note smack in the middle – but she also has a knack for dark Sondheimian complexity, whether it’s the desperate ferocity of Gypsy’s Momma Rose or the macabre glee of Mrs Lovett (playing brilliantly off Jeremy Secomb’s wild-eyed Sweeney Todd).
The transitions between numbers are seamless, thanks to Stephen Mear’s judicious choreography and Warren Letton’s expressive lighting, and there’s rousing support from the onstage band. It’s a reminder of that special relationship between the American composer and British theatre; this Broadway season, in fact, sees Maria Friedman’s resurrection of his Merrily We Roll Along, which began in London.
Yet Old Friends isn’t just a virtuosic display. I welled up at a slideshow of Sondheim pictures, partly because the accompanying performances convey such a heartfelt personal loss, as well as an almighty cultural one. Appropriately for the master of ambivalence, it’s both celebration and requiem. Peters notes in her introduction that Sondheim wanted as many people as possible to see his work, and I can’t think of a better platform. This “great big Broadway show” deserves to be a great big West End hit.
Until Jan 6. 0344 482 5151; sondheimoldfriends.com
