08-05-2025
Here We Are
Stephen Sondheim didn't finish his final musical Here We Are, something we can easily determine by the fact there aren't any songs in the second half.
He did however give his blessing for it to be performed – he wasn't on his deathbed at the time or anything, but having reached the age of 91 with at least six songs left to write for a show he'd been working on for over a decade, I guess he knew this was likely to be its final form.
And so here we are. Sondheim's last gasp is a relatively breezy mash-up of the plots of two Luis Buñuel films, with music and lyrics by the great man and book by US author David Ives – that is to say the second half of Joe Montello's production is basically an Ives play.
It's hard to know how to assess this thing fairly, but I think it's reasonable to say that if you've snagged a ticket you're aware of the various caveats about the show's composition and are prepared to be quite indulgent, so let's approach it from that general perspective.
The first half roughly corresponds to Buñuel's film The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie and follows a group of ghastly rich people as they try and score some brunch, failing ever more weirdly at each attempt. If there aren't necessarily any obvious all-timers, Sondheim's lyrics are delightfully flip and spiky. And modern: it feels somewhat surreal for the guy who wrote West Side Story to have snide references to Teslas and the works of Damian Hirst. But that's Sondheim: it was presumably much harder for him to finish songs in his final years, but what he did finish feels startlingly fresh.
Enormous credit must go to Ives. Not only did he have to finish the show on his own, but his transposition of Buñuel's mid-century satires into a coherent contemporary America-set narrative works brilliantly – deft, funny and perceptive.
It's also important to stress that the cast is preposterously talented: Jane Krakowski is - within her comfort zone - one of the funniest actors alive today, and has a ball here as space cadet Marianne; Martha Pimpton is a hoot as uber-Karen Claudia; retained US star Denis O'Hare is wonderful as a succession of servants and waiters; the Brits keep their end up with Rory Kinnear's fine turn as velour-encrusted Main Rich Guy Leo Brink, while major rising star Chumisa Dornford-May is excellent as Leo and Marianne's anarchist daughter Fritz. Above all they're great stage actors who can by and large pull off the absence of songs in the second half.
Combined with Mantello's stylish direction – quirkily minimalist in the first half, intentionally opulent in the second, which is based on 1962's The Exterminating Angel – and the fact that Buñuel's darkly surreal class satires remains relevant and cool, and it's an extremely respectable not for the master to bow out on.
Is it a great musical? Well not really, half of it's missing and it ultimately feels a bit frothy - much fonder and more forgiving than the source films. But as the final unfinished work of a 91-year-old it's pretty bloody spectacular. The luxury casting doesn't flatter the material: we all know exactly what it is, and what it is is good as far as it goes. And it's worth saying that few of Sondheim's shows have worked perfectly the first time; the dearth of songs is a problem, but not necessarily an insurmountable one; I certainly wouldn't dismiss this as a curio – we'll see Here We Go
