Interludes

THE HANGOVER REPORT – Bernadette Peters, Lea Salonga, and company comprehensively celebrate the works of Sondheim in OLD FRIENDS

• By drediman
• April 9, 2025
• No Comments

Last night, the latest in the growing number of high profile revues of the works of the great Stephen Sondheim arrived on Broadway in the form of Old Friends at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre courtesy of Manhattan Theatre Club. Like many of the Sondheim revues that have come before it, this one is a celebratory and comprehensive overview of his influential and illustrious career, stuffed to the brim with well-worn songs — more than 40 of them — largely culled from his most popular shows and many of them presented in character within loosely narrative-driven mini show suites that call to mind Jerome Robbins’ Broadway (Follies, Sweeney Todd, and Into the Woods received the most elaborate of these treatments). Headlining an accomplished and talented cast of 17 are beloved musical theater stars Bernadette Peters and Lea Salonga, who unsurprisingly provide a handful of the evening’s highlight.

Salonga sang and acted the heck out of “Everything’s Coming Up Roses”, bringing new shades of empowerment and fierce support in a number that can easily register simply as a portrait of a delusional woman. The Filipina star also had me looking at her in a new light as Mrs. Lovett in the Sweeney Todd segment, all but disappearing into the unhinged role and using her still crystalline voice in ways I haven’t heard before. More disciplined and refined than I’ve seen her in recent outings, Peters looked and sounded wonderful, particularly in her dramatic show-stoppers “Send in the Clowns” and “Losing My Mind”. Of the supporting cast, Beth Leavel knocked it out of the ballpark with a voracious rendition of “The Ladies Who Lunch”, as did Gavin Lee in his gender-bending “Could I Leave You”. The rest of the cast is very fine, even if some of their songs don’t quite have the same penetrating depth when taken out of context of their full respective shows. Throughout, the 14-player orchestra sounded magnificent under the arrangements of Stephen Metcalfe and through the filter of Mick Potter‘s lucid sound designer.

Largely missing from Old Friends, unfortunately, are songs from important later efforts like Assassins, Passion, and Road Show, as well as Sondheim’s lesser known works (Pacific Overtures, Anyone Can Whistle). This may in part be due to the show’s beginnings. Originally produced by Cameron Mackintosh as a starry one-night-only benefit performance in London — also led by Peters and Salonga — the revue was self-indulgently presented as a celebration of the prolific producer’s many fruitful collaborations with the legendary musical dramatist. Thankfully, the self-aggrandizing has been minimized since I saw the show across the pond two years ago, although this may explain some of its omissions. As directed by British choreographer Matthew Bourne, the show is efficiently staged if a tad unimaginatively (e.g., remnants of the Les Misérables set, on which Old Friends was originally performed, still feature prominently in the Broadway edition of the revue).

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SONDHEIM’S OLD FRIENDS
Broadway, Musical
Manhattan Theatre Club at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre
2 hours, 45 minutes (with one intermission)
Through June 15