After three Broadway revues of Stephen Sondheim’s music you would think a fourth wouldn’t offer anything fresh, have any surprises, or be anything special.
Think again.
“Old Friends” began life as a London gala backed by the composer’s friend and producer Cameron Mackintosh, following Sondheim’s death in 2021 at the age of 91. That led to a fully realized commercial production in 2023, which became a hit in London with Bernadette Peters making her West End bow. After that, the show was destined for Sondheim’s home turf.
Peters returns for the Manhattan Theatre Club’s fresh, surprising and very special Broadway production, following its run in Los Angeles. Lea Salonga brings additional star power to the sizable roster of extraordinary talents, including Tony and Olivier winners Gavin Lee, Beth Leavel and Joanna Riding.
The limits of the revue format haven’t been artificially enhanced here with theatrical gimmicks. There are no hyper-pixelated screens, special effects or live tracking shots backstage and beyond.
Beginning with the title, the show presents itself simply yet exquisitely. It’s clearly a labor of love, curated by Mackintosh — mostly from the Sondheim shows he’s produced — and starring some of the composer’s veteran players. But this is no musical shiva for close friends and family. More than a tribute, it’s a feast — and one of the most heartfelt and joyous shows of the season.
The production’s 40 numbers are dominated largely by Sondheim’s greatest hits. Sondheim’s credo was to write songs for his shows’ characters, and that directive is respected here with the cream of the crop.
With no forced running narrative, “Old Friends” groups the numbers mostly around individual shows, with one song and segment moving into the next, staged gracefully by Matthew Bourne and choreographed by Stephen Mear. George Reeve’s projections subtly suggests Manhattan, Paris and London with Matt Kinley’s set pieces giving the production some design heft.
Meaningfully, the dozen-plus members of the orchestra are symbolically placed in full view, honoring not only the composer’s work but his musicians, and indirectly the orchestrators, arrangers and music directors who made it all happen. It’s also an opportunity to fully appreciate the knockout of an overture — Sondheim’s only — to “Merrily We Roll Along” as the show’s entr’acte.
The wealth of numbers gives all 19 performers their chance in the spotlight, and the selections are further brightened with some character switcheroos and a few revelations.
There’s a gender swap for the “Follies” song “Can I Leave You?” with Lee bitching up all those quips with a sting. And instead of the role of the Witch in the “Into the Woods” segment (the role which she originated), Peters playfully emerges as Little Red Riding Hood to sing “I Know Things Now” — with a few bars from the title tune of resilience from “Bounce” (the show that later became “Road Show”) slipped in for fun.
“The Little Things You Do Together,” from “Company,” is normally sung in that musical by an observer, but is now wittily performed by an older married couple, with Lee and Leavel making the song not so much commented upon as humorously lived.
But not only are the songs transformed. So are star personas, the most eye-popping being Salonga going all out as Mrs. Lovett (from “Sweeney Todd”), accompanied by Jeremy Secomb in magnificent voice as Todd. But even more remarkable is Salonga’s Momma Rose with “Everything’s Coming Up Roses” (from “Gypsy”), displaying a belt and a fierceness that make the number a showstopper.
Sondheim aficionados will inevitably carp about songs — and even shows, like “Assassins” and the under-appreciated “Pacific Overtures” and “The Frogs” — that are not represented. Or they may take issue with songs in which Sondheim only contributed lyrics. But the revue’s stunning “Tonight Quintet” from “West Side Story” and the ever-hysterical “You Gotta Get a Gimmick” make those quibbles moot.
Other highpoints include two more songs from “Company.” Leavel gets off the barstool and owning the entire stage for her own scathing version of “The Ladies Who Lunch,” and Joanna Riding nails “Getting Married” with pristine clarity and hilarity. (Major credit to Mick Potter’s sound design, in which nary a syllable of a lyric is lost.)
There’s also Bonnie Langford bringing a half century of theater history — she was Baby June in Angela Lansbury’s “Gypsy” — for a well-seasoned “I’m Still Here” (inserting Sondheim’s stanza tweak for the film “Postcards from the Edge”). Kate Jennings Grant achieves the high-jump in the linguistic hurdle of “The Boy From…” (the composer’s contribution to the Off Broadway production “The Mad Show” revue), and Peters bringing a tender fragility to “Send in the Clowns.”
Though at times it seems like Sondheim favored the ladies, here the men also impressively step up to the spotlight, especially Kyle Selig, Jason Pennycooke, Kevin Earley, and Jacob Dickey, who soloed with a soaring “Being Alive.”
But a quieter and reflective moment arrives when Georges Seurat’s “A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte” painting comes to life as the ensemble sings the lush “Sunday” from “Sunday in the Park With George.”
As it builds to its crescendo, Peters, 77, steps into the frame, opens her parasol and strikes her iconic profiled position of the role she created more than 40 years ago. Suddenly you feel that not only is the composer being celebrated here, but Peters, too, and indeed all the decades of creative talents surrounding such classic moments in our collective Sondheim experience. Truly, a gathering of old friends — and new friends, too.
