Cameron Mackintosh’s award winning gala evening tribute to Stephen Sondheim is now back until January 6th. Liz Gill enjoys this unique theatrical spectactle
When Cameron Mackintosh produced a gala evening tribute to Stephen Sondheim last year it sold out within a couple of hours and went on to win the Best Theatre Event at the What’s On Stage Awards.
Fans who were disappointed not to get tickets for the big night have now got another chance to see what all the fuss was about. Stephen Sondheim’s Old Friends has opened at the Gielgud Theatre and will run until January 6th.
It is a dazzling show musically and visually with high octane performances backed by a 14 piece orchestra and directed by Matthew Bourne and Julia McKenzie.
Heading the 19 strong cast are Broadway legends Bernadette Peters and Lea Salonga alongside British stalwart Bonnie Langford who raised cheers from the audience with her ability to do a vertical high kick and the splits at the age of 59.
For Peters, who with her mane of Titian curls and perfect pale skin looks very much younger than her 75 years, this was her London debut and one worth waiting for. With her interpretation of the heart-rending Send in the Clowns she showed why she was one of the composer’s favourites. He said she was one of the few who could act and sing at the same time. Her versatility was on show too in a variety of other roles including Little Red Riding Hood in the Into the Woods sequence with Bradley Jaden as a sexy wolf.
Salonga also mastered both humour as human pie-maker Mrs. Lovett from Sweeney Todd and intensity with Everything’s Coming Up Roses from Gypsy. Sondheim only wrote the lyrics for the latter as he also did for West Side Story and I’ve always thought him a better composer of lyrics than tunes. But what lyrics those are: wise, witty, poetic, imaginative, covering every aspect of human experience.
The cast, which has hugely talented young members as well as the musical theatre veterans and those in between, sing them with power and passion and, importantly, with perfect clarity. The choreography by Stephen Mear is stylish and elegantly executed.
There are costume and scene changes for sequences like Sweeney Todd and West Side Story but the default setting is reminiscent of old Hollywood with its sweeping illuminated staircases and the cast dressed black tie and fabulously glittery cocktail dresses and ballgowns.
At one point there is a sweet photo montage projected overhead of Sondheim from baby to old man. The man himself died in November 2021 at the age of 91. This exceptional show proves his legacy lives on.
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