Review: Good Times, Not Bum Times, Will Be Had at Stephen Sondheim's Old Friends

Stephen Sondheim’s Old Friends, now at Manhattan Theatre Club’s Samuel J. Friedman Theatre, is one smart revue, as befits the genius who radically upped Broadway’s game.

Old Friends stems from a gala one-night tribute in London in May 2022, the success of which inspired deviser/producer Cameron Macintosh to give it a run in the West End (2023-24), Los Angeles (this past winter), and now where it truly belongs, in New York City.

This sparkling, just-the-high-points compendium is launched by “Comedy Tonight” from A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, with the full 17-member company of American and British theater artists kicking up their heels (choreography by Stephen Mear) in glamorous glittery black outfits (costumes by Jill Parker). Bernadette Peters – of course! – and Lea Salonga lead a cast of talented singers and hoofers, who make the most of this opportunity to shine.

Long-time fave Beth Leavel, for instance, delivers a game-changing, stone-cold sober “The Ladies Who Lunch,” at once vicious and vulnerable. She’s also a knockout as half of the mmhmm-ing couple in “The Little Things You Do Together” (her partner, Gavin Lee, overplays his half; the British male contingent of the production, in general, veers toward to music-hall broadness).

Fans know going in that Peters is going to own the show, and she does. Her “Send in the Clowns,” rendered reservedly in a single spotlight (effective lighting throughout by Warren Letton), is understated and unsurpassably poignant. In contrast, a more fully staged totemic solo in Act II – “Losing My Mind” – comes across as overdone to the point of goopy.

Questionable, as well, is Peters’s no doubt directorially mandated depressive rendition of Tessie Tura in “You Gotta Get a Gimmick.” This whole Gypsy number is barely fleshed out, and Leavel and double Olivier-winner Joanna Riding have little to show for their gyrations beyond some flashing lights. So, why not drop it entirely? There’s a terrific alternative playing nearby, and its inclusion here seems both impolite and superfluous.

But the set list was created in London as a tribute to the Sondheim shows that Mackintosh produced, and is unaltered here. The work given shortest shrift is Sunday in the Park with George (though it’s given a passing nod). Bits from Passion and Road Show (originally titled Bounce) are credited in the program: bonus points should you detect them.

The main threads represent five incontestable hits: Company (Riding aces “Getting Married Today”); Into the Woods (where Peters plays Little Red); A Little Night Music (Kate Jennings Grant shines as a reluctant and in fact unwelcome rusticator); Sweeney Todd (Salonga is both unrecognizable and brilliant as Mrs. Lovett); and, for the lyrics’ sake, West Side Story.

Cleverly, but not entirely effectively, set designer Matt Kinley rolls in a pair of medieval looking, balustraded side walls that work great for Into the Woods (we get to witness Maria Wirries as Rapunzel, warbling as she unspools two stories’ worth of golden locks), but they’re weirdly anachronistic for the mean streets of West Side Story. Happily, though, one balcony affords a brief, exquisite glimpse of Salonga singing “Somewhere” like a heraldic angel.

Aladdin alum Jacob Dickey is suitably salacious delivering Into the Woods’s “Hello, Little Girl.” And Bonnie Langford renders a smashing “I’m Still Here.” A lifelong trouper, she played Baby June to Angela Lansbury’s Rose in 1973, so she knows whereof she sings.

Otherwise, the second act is a bit of mishmash, and a trifle over-padded. But can there be such a thing as a surfeit of Sondheim? At the two-and-a-half-hour mark, you can expect the first fake finale, followed by two reprises. Overlooking the final sections is a photo collage honoring the deeply empathic creative dynamo we were fortunate to have living among us for 91 years. We might have had to say goodbye, old friend, but the music lives on.