Here We Are: Sondheim's swansong is like meeting an old friend

Telegraph

09-05-2025

When Stephen Sondheim died in November 2021, he left behind a body of work that had collectively transformed the American musical and that ensured his pre-eminence among composer-lyricists of the post-war era.
He also bequeathed us, tantalisingly, one last effort – unveiled in New York two years later: a reimagining and yoking-together of two films by that arch surrealist Luis Buñuel: The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972) and The Exterminating Angel (1962). Here We Are, as it was finally titled, had been stuck in development hell for much of the prior decade. What enabled its completion was the brainwave - amid the confinement of the pandemic - by the director Joe Mantello (securing the interest of the book-writer David Ives) that maybe an 'unfinished' score enabled a coherent artistic vision; a deficit could be a creative end-point.
So, the first half has tunes a-plenty while the supply runs dry-ish after the interval, when the principal characters – a cohort of the well-heeled, modernised and plutocrat-Americanised in the screen-to-stage transfer – progress from being continually frustrated in their search for culinary gratification to being nightmarishly trapped in an ambassador's salon after a meal. It works on paper (the characters are mysteriously incapable of connecting with the outside world, so why wouldn't music cease too?) and accords with the narrative's hallucinogenic logic.
It's a tough proposition in practice, even so. But watching the UK premiere at the NT (with Mantello directing a mainly new cast) to me the tension the conceit creates – is this legit or a cheap, fraudulent fix? – makes this anti-climactic coda the perfect Sondheim epitaph. He began his career as the lyricist on West Side Story, which challenged received ideas about a Broadway musical – and ploughed an experimental furrow thereafter. How apt, in a way, that at a moment when we're glutted with musicals, Sondheim's poignant last gesture should ask whether the sound of no-music can contribute to the form, too. And just as the device concentrates attention on the dialogue and a discussion of death, the slide towards silence flags a wider malaise about the capacity of song and dance to distract us; more than in the films, the production accentuates a mood of end-times. Beside food scarcity, ominous rumbles cut the arid atmosphere and the twinning of the stories ferments a sense of impending uprising.
That possibly makes the evening sound heavy-going but, even if the chatter drags in the second half, it's mainly light on its feet and served with visual flair and orchestral heft. Exploring group dynamics and satirising facile types was long Sondheim's forte, and in revisiting familiar ground, the music also invites comparison with past triumphs. The jaunty extended opening number (The Road) has a Latin American shuffle that recalls biting, buoyant moments in Company – and in delectable ditties by put-upon serving staff (the brilliantly multi-roling Denis O'Hare and Tracie Bennett), we get lashings of the old wit and word play we'd expect, and a strong in-jokey soupçon of Sweeney Todd.
Do we crave more? Yes, with the exception of Richard Fleeshman as a dreamboat soldier, plying a lushly romantic (quirkily interrupted) ballad and a droll sustained cri de coeur from a bishop (Harry Hadden-Paton), the male cast – including Rory Kinnear as a gruff (somewhat waywardly accented) billionaire – can seem under-used. And I'd love to hear more from Jane Krakowski as his ditzy wife and Martha Plimpton as a brash 'entertainment entity' exec (hats off, too, to Chumisa Dornford-May, as a comically headstrong anti-capitalist). We can carp until doomsday about what it lacks but it's a boon to have it over here. Sure, it's no masterpiece, but a minor-league swansong from a giant of musicals is still a major deal.
Until June 20; nationaltheatre.org.uk