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Review: Sondheim’s Old Friends Makes the Grade
April 11, 2025, 3:56.59 pm ET

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PhotoS: Matthew Murphy

By Brian Scott Lipton

If I had to make a guess, most of the audience at Manhattan Theatre Club’s Samuel J. Friedman Theatre have more than a passing familiarity the songs of the late, great Stephen Sondheim – which is a big plus while watching the beautifully sung if oddly conceived revue “Sondheim’s Old Friends,” which has settled in for a spring engagement after previous runs in London and Los Angeles.

Headlined by the ageless Bernadette Peters and iron-lunged Lea Salonga – joined by a stellar 17-actor ensemble and an excellent onstage orchestra – this delightful show serves up over 40 of the master’s timeless tunes, albeit without any dialogue or context.

As a result, newcomers to his oeuvre (if there are any) may end up occasionally confused but can still revel in Sondheim’s gifts for wordplay and unusual melodies. Conversely, aficionados may end up engaging in a dangerous game of compare-and-contrast to previous renditions, but still delight in hearing these theatrical gems (staged to varying degrees by director Matthew Bourne and choreographed by Stephen Mear on a barely-there set by Matt Kinley).

Wisely, Peters, still one of our greatest singing actresses, has been allowed (in various ways) to reprise the Sondheim songs to which she has long been tied: the bittersweet ballads “Send in the Clowns,” “Losing My Mind” and “No One Is Alone,” as well as briefly getting to portray “Dot” – the role she originated in “Sunday in the Park with George”-- during a prologue to the gorgeous anthem “Sunday.” But her best (and most surprising) moment is when she takes on brassy stripper Mazeppa in a hilarious version of “You Gotta Get a Gimmick” (from “Gypsy”) alongside an equally game Beth Leavel and Joanna Riding.

The clarion-voiced, elegant Salonga sounds beautiful on her many solos, from “Loving You” to “Somewhere,” but her finest moment is a brassy, belty “Everything’s Coming Up Roses” that makes you long to see her take on Momma Rose. She’s also triumphant (and basically unrecognizable) as the eccentric piemaker Mrs. Lovett – opposite the imposing Jeremy Secomb – in two excerpts from “Sweeney Todd”: the comedic “The Worst Pies in London” and “A Little Priest.”

The entire ensemble gets their chances to shine, with too many highlights to mention. First and foremost, Leavel shows off her brass and sass in a breathtaking “The Ladies Who Lunch”; Bonnie Langford is wonderfully wry during “I’m Still Here”; Jacob Dickey is lusciously lascivious in “Hello, Little Girl”; and Gavin Lee is brilliantly bitchy in “Could I Leave You” and deliciously droll in “Everyone Ought to Have a Maid” (alongside the versatile Kyle Selig and Jason Pennycooke).

Admittedly, I have more than a few quibbles (including the omission of so many shows) and some numbers don’t completely work. But any chance to hear the not-so-little night music of Stephen Sondheim should not be passed up!

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