Interludes

THE HANGOVER REPORT – Sondheim’s final musical HERE WE ARE finds the late master still questing to stretch the limits of the form

• By drediman
• October 23, 2023
• No Comments

Last night, Stephen Sondheim’s final musical Here We Are opened at the Griffin Theater at The Shed. Co-written with playwright David Ives — who provided the musical’s substantial book — the piece is based on a pair of surreal films by Spanish director Luis Buñuel, The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972) and The Exterminating Angel (1962). The first tells the story of six upper-class acquaintances who endeavor to have a meal together, yet somehow never manage to successfully do so. In the second, the same cohort ironically find themselves at a dinner party that they tragically can’t leave.

By ingeniously stitching the two discrete movies together, Sondheim and Ives have come up with a work that’s greater than the sum of its individual parts. In doing so, Here We Are‘s astute observations on the dire state of modern human society take on a deeper human resonance than the films’ slicing yet surface-level satire. True to form, Sondheim digs. In the musical’s doozy of a first act —- for the most part fully formed and populated with deceptively jaunty songs that weave in and out of Ives’ book with prismatic color and dexterity — Sondheim and Ives provide both ample context for their probing insights, in the process drawing out fully fleshed characters from Buñuel’s caricatures. As a result, by the time we get to the musical’s emotionally brutal second act, we’re prepared to mine the depths of their existential struggles, both individually and as a collective.

Given Sondheim’s unfortunate passing, there is a noticeable dearth of songs in the second act. Nonetheless, Act 2 isn’t completely devoid of music — there are less than a handful of songs in the beginning of the act, the balance of which is effectively underscored thanks to the additional contributions of music supervisor Alexander Gemignani and orchestrator Jonathan Tunick (both invaluable longtime collaborators of Sondheim’s). Additionally, an argument can be made for the thematic withholding of songs as the characters increasingly lose hope — with their illusions of life danishes and shattered, they retreat to the less fanciful and aspiring mode of dialogue as a means of communication and expression.

Luckily, the sleek, taut staging by director Joe Mantello is masterful, bringing shape and a sharp point of view to what is otherwise admittedly a first draft. The ensemble cast assembled for The Shed’s world premiere production can hardly be bettered. Each performs with clear intention and carefully drawn personality, and their delivery of Sondheim’s final score is both forceful and articulate (particularly affecting is Tony-winner Rachel Bay Jones as a deliciously flighty socialite who finds her voice under crisis). Until the very end, Here We Are finds the master questing to stretch the limits of the musical theater form — and Mantello and his spectacular cast are only so willing to journey down the rabbit hole with him, as they should.

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HERE WE ARE
Off-Broadway, Musical
The Shed
2 hours, 20 minutes (with one intermission)
Through January 21