Theater News

Bernadette Peters, Lea Salonga to Lead Stephen Sondheim's Old Friends Show in the West End

The concert production will run for 16 weeks this fall.

Stephen Sondheim and Bernadette Peters
Stephen Sondheim and Bernadette Peters
(© David Gordon)

Bernadette Peters will make her West End debut — and Lea Salonga will return to the West End for the first time in 27 years — in a fall 2023 run of Stephen Sondheim's Old Friends, a new concert revue at the Gielgud Theatre.

Peters and Salonga will star alongside Christine Allado, Janie Dee, Bonnie Langford, Jeremy Secomb, Beatrice Penny-Touré, Joanna Riding, and Jac Yarrow, with further casting still to be announced. The show will run September 16-January 6.

Based on the Sondheim tribute concert that ran for one night only in 2022 and won a WhatsOnStage Award, Stephen Sondheim's Old Friends is devised and produced by Cameron Mackintosh.

The production will be directed by Matthew Bourne, side by side with Julia McKenzie, with choreography by Stephen Mear, conducting by Alfonso Casado Trigo, musical supervision by Stephen Brooker, musical arrangements by Stephen Metcalfe, set design by Matt Kinley, projection design by George Reeve, lighting design by Warren Letton, and sound design by Mick Potter.