Cameron Mackintosh, who had a lifetime of collaboration with Stephen Sondheim, devised Old Friends, a spectacular, one-night, all-star ensemble gala concert in 2022 to honour Sondheim who had died in 2021 during the Covid pandemic at the age of 91.
His tribute to one of the theatre’s great composers and lyricists has now been turned into a big, Broadway show. Matthew Bourne directs side by side with Julie McKenzie. Stephen Mear choreographs. Alfonso Casado Trigo conducts. The smooth-running production is elegant and glitzy.
Old Friends is the third revue of Sondheim’s works but, unlike Side by Side, it has no narrator, and unlike Putting it Together, it has no plot. It is just Sondheim’s words.
Sweeney Todd, Into the Woods, Sunday in the Park with George, Follies, Company…. There is so much drama, so much comedy, so much variety, so much wit, so much dexterity in his lyrics, so much talent in Sondheim’s musically demanding musicals. 19 singers sing 41 songs. Hit number follows hit number, follows hit number, each getting a huge ovation.
Broadway legend Bernadette Peters, Sondheim’s muse, is making her West End debut and sings Send in the Clowns and Losing My Mind. Lea Salonga sings The Worst Pies in London (as Mrs Lovett opposite Jeremy Secombe’s Sweeney Todd) and Everything’s Coming Up Roses (as Mama Rose in Gypsy).
Joanna Riding gets hysterical at the thought of Getting Married Today. Clare Burt toasts The Ladies Who Lunch. Bradley Jaden’s howling wolf (with a phallic tail) wants to gobble up Red Riding Hood. Janie Dee (as a naïve woman in love with a boy from some unpronounceable Brazilian town) delivers a tongue twister to end all tongue twisters. Bonnie Langford (who played the brilliantly precocious 8-year-old in Gypsy in the 1982 British premiere) is still here and is still capable of the highest high kick.
Three gays, with feather dusters, camp up Everybody Ought To Have A Maid. Three slags pull out all the vulgar stops in You Gotta Get A Gimmick. Jason Pennycooke is very funny in Buddy’s Blues, an extremely energetic vaudeville act, in which he switches from male to female role at speed.
There is so much to enjoy. Old Friends will delight Sondheim aficionados.
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