Yahoo Lifestyle ‘Stephen Sondheim’s Old Friends’ L.A. Review: Songwriting Depth and Skilled Diva Turns Make the Broadway-Bound Revue a Retrospective Joy
There are the ladies who lunch. And then there are the ladies of musical theater who eat everyone else’s lunch.
“Stephen Sondheim’s Old Friends” has plenty of the latter, and as a revue, as opposed to a narrative musical, it has no limit on the number of diva power ballads that can be packed into one show, nor any of the normal fears that one of these numbers might overshadow another in the course of an overpacked evening. Now playing a four-week run at L.A.’s Ahmanson Theatre in advance of hitting Broadway, “Old Friends” is hardly lacking for capable menfolk to round out its considerable ensemble of talent. But in the end, it is Sondheim’s love for womankind that provides the biggest turbo boost when it comes time to make “everybody rise,” as his “Company” lyrics famously command.
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As befits a tribute to genius, there is a level of genius right in the primary casting. At the top of the show, the audience gets a nice two-shot of Bernadette Peters and Lea Salonga, standing (how else) side by side as they deliver a very few introductory words about the tributee and then launch right into one of his earliest theatrical songs, “Comedy Tonight.” Very quickly, they are joined on stage by the full cast, establishing that this will be an oxymoronic delight: a star vehicle and a true ensemble piece. But while it’s just the two of them, you get to soak in the complementary wisdom of having these two as the twin marqee attractions — one being the actress most long-associated with the titular composer (Peters, who has this as her seventh Sondheim show), and the other, also a musical theater legend, having had virtually no prior association with him (Salonga, who’d only done “Sweeney Todd” in Manila and Singapore). It’s a good way of letting an audience know straight off that they’re going to get both comfort food and some culinary discovery.
Thankfully, producer Cameron Mackintosh — who chose the setlist — and director Matthew Bourne don’t give all the greatest hits to Peters and Solanga, then leave the other 17 members of the cast fighting over scraps. Of course, not everybody gets a chance to step in front for a show stopper, not even in the opportunity-rich course of a 40-song show. But among those who do are Beth Leavel and Bonnie Langford, both names that will etch a place in your mental Rolodex after their bravura solo turns in this show. Leavel, a Broadway veteran, gets the emotional climax of the first act with “The Ladies Who Lunch,” delivered with a slow-burn ferocity that makes a society brunch sound like a dog-eat-dog world. Langford, midway through the second act, gets left alone to sensitively fight and claw her way through “I’m Still Here.” It’s the latter song that usually gets thought of as the “I Will Survive” of the theater, but, with the voracious way “Ladies Who Lunch” is treated here, that song, too, also comes off as kind of a voracious existential statement. (A howled “Everybody dies!” counts as a commandment to live, as well as to brunch, right?)
Also bringing down the house from the support cast is Joanna Riding, achieving perfection with the motor-mouthed speed-rap that is “Getting Married Today,” which counts as a magic trick as much as musical accomplishment — a literal rush job that’s worth at least the price of a rush ticket all by itself.
If you’re wondering what all-time showpieces are left for Peters and Salonga after Leavel and Langford have claimed those two classics, you’re not wracking your brain nearly hard enough. Peters get to put a lifetime’s worth of thinking about these pieces to work on “Send in the Clowns” in the first half and “Losing My Mind” in the second, while Salonga does a nearly 11:00 version of “Everything’s Coming Up Roses” that comes up aces, even if you’ve just seen Audra McDonald do it in “Gypsy” on the other coast.
That’s just cataloging the most obvious go-tos for these ladies who devour. Salonga and Peters have their other highlights, too, when they’re not generously blending into the ensemble, as this revue sometimes asks of them. Salonga’s most surprising moments, for most of the audience, probably come during the five-song mini-suite devoted to “Sweeney Todd.” This show, which originated with a London gala followed by a recent West End run, is so packed with Brits in the cast that most viewers will probably assume it’s someone from across the pond pulling off the comedy of Mrs. Lovett’s Cockney-isms, not someone better known for projecting a sense of regality — so this is a case where it helps to keep the Playbill open to be sure who you’re admiring.
Kudos are also due to Salonga’s scene partner there, Jeremy Secomb, who, as the homicidal barber, manages to replace the image Johnny Depp left in your mind of Sweeney as someone who is both fey and ferocious with a brief portrayal that’s just fierce. (A special nod, also, to producer Mackintosh, for having “The Worst Pies in London” and “A Little Priest” be immediately followed in this revue by “The Ladies Who Lunch.” That might feel like an abrupt juxtaposition, until you realize: Oh, of course, we’re in the food portion of the show now! At least, there might be a sly joke there.)
Peters is on completely familiar turf with this show, meanwhile. Or is she? Part of the charm of this revue, for fans of his or hers, is seeing and hearing her do Sondheim material she hasn’t tackled before, sometimes taking on a different role in a show associated with her. In the “Into the Woods” segment, Peters gets the ultimate theatrical de-aging process — she’s not the Witch, but Little Red Ridinghood, singing “I Know Things Now” and sharing (with Jacob Dickey’s wolf) “Hello Little Girl.” Some of the musical twists built into the show include Salonga now getting the bulk of “Children Will Listen,” although Peters takes part in it… and the title song from Sondheim’s latter-day “Bounce” (aka “Wise Guys,” or “Road Show,” or “Gold!”) being tagged on to “I Know Things Now.”
It’s no slight to the vocal skill that Peters still brings to the songs, though, that she gets what might be her biggest applause moment for standing still and silent — seen in iconic profile in the first glimpse of Dot, the first Sondheim role she ever played on Broadway in the ‘80s, in a key moment devoted to “Sunday in the Park With George.” Mackintosh and Bourne have said that they want “Old Friends” to appeal as much to someone who is coming to the composer as a complete neophyte as to a return Sondheim customer. But you do have to wonder what somebody coming in completely afresh will make of much of the audience losing its shit at the sight of Peters holding an umbrella.
At this point, it may be a useful question to ask: Who is “Old Friends” for? The creators deserve credit for keeping newbies in mind, and certainly it’s possible to love this show without an advanced degree in Sondheim. But the show’s title (borrowed from a “Merrily We Roll Along” song) may refer to the core demo of faithful followers who will turn out for this as much as anyone or anything. And they’ve earned this: Three years after the composer’s death, “Stephen Sondheim’s Old Friends” still counts as the fan base’s first real shot at experiencing a wake. Never mind that, by an accident of political timing, so many theater creatives as well as so much of the audience is feeling funereal. So, right now, everybody could use this big of a blast. Tragedy tomorrow, seriously… comedy tonight!
That emphasis on fun is one thing that sets “Stephen Sondheim’s Old Friends” apart from the previous two Mackintosh-produced revues of his work, “Side by Side by Sondheim” (from the mid-‘70s) and “Putting It Together” (circa the mid-‘90s). Mackintosh told Variety earlier that he wanted this third production to emphasize Sondheim as a great, accessible melody writer, and someone who honestly loved his role as a behind-the-scenes entertainer, not just the theater’s foremost purveyor of lyrical profundities. And so, while a two-and-a-half-hour length does allow breathing room for weeping, you’re also getting things like “You’ve Gotta Get a Gimmick,” from “Gypsy,” which allows Peters to blow some trumpet, playing a stripper. There is also, at the top of Act 2, a small but rousing chunk of “West Side Story.” Either the “Gypsy” or “West Side” material might not feel like canon to Sondheim buffs, being lyrics-only entries from his early work. But a more generic-feeling inclusion like “Somewhere” or “Tonight” is going to provide the same satisfaction to a certain part of the audience that, say, the lone selection from “Passion” (Salonga’s reading of “Loving You”) is going to provide the more Easter-egg-craving crowd.
One possible casualty of the show being as delightful as it is — and of it being a revue, period — is the absence of a narrative or emotional buildup that would have the tenderer songs in the second half of Act 2 feeling quite as poignant as they might in their shows’ original context. But in the end, Mackintosh isn’t wrong, that most — maybe not all — of these show tunes work as stand-alones… especially the tear-stirrers. The one-two punch of “Not a Day Goes By” and “Being Alive” would land right in the gut even if we were being reminded just of our own mortality, and not Sondheim’s, as the cast turns to salute him on an overhead screen.
“I’m Still Here” naturally has to find a place just a bit earlier in the show, as an angrier song as well as a celebrative one. But, in the current climate, doesn’t that anthem almost feel like a political statement? There are a lot of reasons to love “Old Friends,” only a few of which happen to be particular to this specific moment. But for all the reasons it resonates, it’s hard to imagine too many Sondheim fans being completely fulfilled by seeing it just once. A fair amount of repeat business in a short time is probably in store for an Ahmanson engagement that ends March 9, very shortly before it opens on Broadway, with crazy expedience, at the Manhattan Theatre Club on March 25.
Lunch isn’t really the right foodie analogy; a show this packed with reconstituted genius is like a six-course meal made up entirely of desserts. You could feel guilty about getting all these classic numbers in one fell swoop, without the original connective tissue. But in 2025, we probably have greater things to worry about than the appropriateness of too much pleasure in one two-and-a-half-hour sitting. Taking in the full breadth of the human places Sondheim took us to feels suspiciously like being alive.
(An addendum: One of the show’s countless real treats is the entr’acte that kicks off while everyone is still re-finding their seats, a jazz-orchestra treatment of the overture from “Merrily We Roll Along,” led by music director Annbritt duChateau, that ends too quickly. Would it be nuts to imagine that, after this production has passed, somebody might have the bright idea to celebrate Sondheim’s gifts for melody with an instrumental jazz revue?)
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