A heartfelt homage that brings Stephen Sondheim back to life
Legacy: Maria Friedman and Friends
Menier Chocolate Factory, London SE1 ★★★★★
Few theatres can boast having had such a close and successful working relationship with the late Stephen Sondheim as the Menier Chocolate Factory. From 2005’s revelatory staging of Sunday in the Park with George through to a nifty, New York-imported Into the Woods in 2016, it has banged the drum on his behalf with unignorable force, and provided a home from home for the Anglophile composer and lyricist.
The last new production Sondheim revealed was an off-broadway incarnation of Merrily We Roll Along, as directed by Maria Friedman here a decade ago, and now set to star Daniel Radcliffe. So it makes complete sense that the Menier’s director, David Babani, has rustled up the first homage since Sondheim’s death in November, fronted by Friedman.
In theory, Legacy is dedicated to the “three men” in the triple Olivierwinning actress and director’s professional life, all friends of hers. Not just Sondheim, but distinguished (also deceased) fellow composers Marvin Hamlisch, who wrote the music for
A Chorus Line, and Michel Legrand, the Frenchman behind The Umbrellas of Cherbourg and Oscar-winning song
The Windmills of Your Mind.
In reality, it’s a feast for Sondheim fans with a nice sprinkling of numbers from the other two, with a few surprises on top. Throw in affable chat and reminiscence, and the soirée risks over-stuffing its guests; but given how moreish Sondheim’s songs are, and how sating, it amounts to vital comfort food for these jittery times.
Unexpected reassurance is offered at the outset, as Friedman enters singing Being Alive, the climactic number from Company. “Alone is alone, not alive”, run the ever piquant lyrics, as she’s joined by her four main singing companions.
And, corny though it sounds, it’s as if Sondheim is in the room with us, too – how could that musically imparted genius, cutting to the core of human existence, with all its travails, and summoning the spirit needed to endure them, ever perish? Friedman’s forte is warmth, born of a winning defiance, and she applies it with bravura strokes to this anthem.
As facially expressive as she is vocally impressive, the Sondheim corpus flows in her veins. We get a supreme account of Broadway Baby,
with an anecdote about how, cat-called as she stepped onto the stage at Drury Lane to perform it in her youth, she clambered out of self-doubt on the spot and burrowed her way into the kernel of the song. In Losing My Mind,
Friedman imparts the desolation of unrequited passion. Opposite Ian Mclarnon, she handles the dots of self-containment and dashes of tongue-twisty angst in Sunday in the Park’s opening number.
We knew that Sondheim’s legacy was assured, but that point is further underlined by fresh-faced contributions from Friedman’s son Alfie, virtuosic in a hectic, sardonic number from Merrily;
Indonesian sensation Desmonda Cathabel, giving an impeccable rendition of The Miller’s Son; and a choir from the Royal Academy of Music in the wistfully optimistic Our Time.
Of course, I enjoyed the Legrand and Hamlisch items too, every number deftly served at the piano by Theo Jamieson, with Paul Moylan on double bass and Joe Evans on drums.
But they provided a useful reintroduction – the Sondheim was an essential reconnection.
Until April 17. Tickets: 020 7378 1713; menierchocolatefactory.com